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field of cultural production once again provides us with key terms for under standing the issues at the forefront of current critical debate. His accounts of the economy of symbolic capital and of cultural power relations will undoub tedly become classic formulations, shaping future work on the sociology of cul Usa Jardine, University of London
ture."
The Field of Cultural Production brings together Bourdieu', most important writings on art, literature, and aesthetics. Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the key issues that have preoccupied liter ary, art, and cultural criticism in the late twentieth century: aesthetic value and judgement, the social contexts of cultural practice, the role of intellectuals and artists, and the structures of literary and artistic authority. Bourdieu elaborates a theory of the cultural field which situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and con sumption. He examines the individuals and institutions involved in making cul tural products what they are: not only the writers and artists, but also the pub lishers, critics, dealers, galleries, and academies. He analyses the structure of the cultural field itself as well as its position within the broader social structures of power. The essays in this volume examine such diverse topics as Flaubert's point of view, Manet's aesthetic revolution. the historical creation of the pure gaze, and the relationship between art and power. The Field of Cultural Production will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines: sociology and social theory, literature, art, and cultural studies. Pierre Bourdieu is Professor of Sociology at the College de France. His numerous other works include Homo Academicus and Longuage and Symbolic Power. Cover illustration: Spencer Gore. Gauguins and Connoisseurs at the SlJJ/ford Gallery, 1911-12.
Private Collection. Cover design by Miller, Craig and Cocking
ISBN 0-231-0&2&7-&
Columbia University Press European Perspectives
9
A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Lawrence D. Kritzman. Editor
European Perspectiyes A
Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism Lawrence D. Kritzman, Editor
European Perspectives presents
The Field of Cultural Production Essays on Art and Literature
outstanding books by leading European thinkcrs. With
both classic and contemporary works, the series aims to shape the major intcllectual controversies of our day and to facilitate the tasks of historical understanding. for a complete list of books in the series, see page 323.
Pierre Bourdieu
Edited and Introduced by Randal Johnson
Columbia University Press
Contents
•
First published in the US by Columbia University Press 1993 First published in the UK by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1993 This edition Copyright Copyright
e Polity
Press
10 Preface and Editor's Introduction:
Randal Johnson
Chapters I and 3: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. 1983
Copyright Chapters 8 and 10: Blackwell Publishers, 1968, 1989 Copyright e Chapter 9: Pierre Bourdieu, 1987. English translation (> Polity Copyright
and Culture
Vtt .
1
Part I The Field of Cultural Production
Press, 1993
1
The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed 2 The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods 3 The Market of Symbolic Goods
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bourdicu, Pierre.
The field of cultural production; essays on art and literature I
Pierre Bourdieu : edited and introduced by Randal Johnson. p.
Preface Editor's Introduction: Pierre Bourdieu on Art, Literature
.
cm-(European perspectives)
29 74 112
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-231-08286-X (cloth) -ISBN 0-231-08287-8 (pbk) 1. Arts and society-France. 3. Aesthetics, French.
4. Arts-Economic aspects-France.
I. Johnson. Randal, 1948NX 180.S6B68
Part II Flaubert and the French Literary Field
2. Arts audiences-France.
.
II. Title.
4
III. Series.
1993
700'.1 '030944- Throughout its many facets, Bourdieu's work combines rigorous empirical analysis with a highly elaborate theoretical frame. One of its central concerns is the role of culture in the reproduction of social structures, or the way in which unequal power relations, unrecognized as such and thus accepted as legitimate, are embedded in the systems of classification used to describe and discuss everyday life - as well as cultural practices - and in the ways of perceiving reality that are taken for granted by members of society.J Bourdieu argues, especially in Distinction, that systems of domination find expression in virtually all areas of cultural practice and symbolic exchange, including such things as preferences in dress, sports, food, music, literature, art and so on, Of, in a more general sense, in taste.4 As he remarks, 'taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the distinc tions they make, between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar, in which their position in the objective classifications is expressed or betrayed.' Although they do not create or cause class divisions and inequalities, 'art and cultural consumption are pre disposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences' and thus contribute to the process of social reproduction.5 Like Foucault, Bourdieu sees power as diffuse and often concealed in broadly accepted, and often unquestioned, ways of seeing and describing the world; but unlike Foucault, in Bourdieu's formulation this diffuse or symbolic power is closely intertwined with but not reducible to - economic and political power, and thus serves a legitimating function. Bourdieu's work on the cultural field constitutes a forceful argument against both Kantian notions of the universality of the aesthetic and ideologies of artistic and cultural autonomy from external determinants. He provides an analytical model which reintroduces, through the concept of habitus, a notion of the agent - which structuralism had excluded from social analysis - without falling into the idealism of Romantic conceptions of the artist as creator (or sub;ect) which still informs much literary and art criticism today. At the same time, with the concept of (ield, he grounds the agent's action in objective social relations, without succumbing to the mechanistic determinism of many forms of sociological and 'Marxian' analysis. The essays included in this volume contribute, in a very fertile and often provocative manner, to transcending false dichotomies between internal and external readings,
Editor's Introduction
3
utions, literary and sociological analysis, popular and tS and instit convincingly argues against essentialist concepts ��;h culture.theBourdieu (Stili) dommant charISmatic vIsion of the artist, both of of art and efface the objective. posItion of art and cultural practice in which tendoftoSOCial relations. theory of practice thus calls into d fiel e h n many of the underlyingHISpresuppositions and doxa which have �uestiO d the study of literature and art. lonIng guide this brief mtroductlon, I Will attempt to summarize the major features of Bourdieu's mode of analysis as they relate to the study of art and literature. Since his work on the cultural field is inseparable from his broader concerns, even such a limited purpose requires a certain contextualization within the general thrust of his work as a whole. At the same time, I have no intention of providing a thorough overview or a critical analysis of Bourdieu's work, or of situating it, except in a broad sense, within the multiple theoretical positions in the social sciences and philosophy with which his work implicitly or explicitly engages. In the first part of the introduction I will outline some of the basic tenets of Bourdieu's theory of practice. In the second, I will turn towards his application of that theory to the literary/artistic field (henceforth referred to simply as the cultural field). Then, in the third, I will focus on his theory of art perception and aesthetics. I Bo�rdieu first turned his atten�ion to the field of cultural production in a �erles of semmars held at the Ecole Normale SiJperieure, and later at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, starting in the 1960s.6 Much of his work prior to that time had been, in his own words, that of a 'blissful structurahst' engaged in ethnographic studies of Algerian peasant communltles.7 Through those studies he had come to see the limitations of structuralism and had begun formulating his own theory and methodology as a means of overcoming a series of dichotomies (indi Vidual vs society, freedom vs necessity, and so forth) which had, in his View, Impeded the development of a scientific approach to human practi.ce. He subsumed these dichotomies under the central epistemolo gical dichotomy between 'subjectivism' and 'objectivism' or as he sO etimes puts it, between social phenomenology and social physics.8 �ubJectlVlsm represents a form of knowledge about the social world b. as d on the primary experience and perceptions of individ and tudes such intellectual currents as phenomenology, rationalualsaction c :� eory and certain forms of interpretive sociology, anthropology and IingulStlC analysis (what Volosinov calls 'indiv idualistic subjectivism').9
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Editor's Introduction
In the literary field this would include all idealistic and essentialist theories based on the charismatic ideology of the writer as 'creator'. Objectivism, on the other hand, attempts to explain the social world by bracketing individual experience and subjectivity and focusing instead on the objective conditions which structure practice independent of human consciousness. It is found in many social theories, including Saussurean semiology, structural anthropology and Althusserian Marx ism.1O Both subjectivism and objectivism fail to account for what Bourdieu refers to as the 'objectivity of the subjective'. I Subjectivism fails to grasp the social ground that shapes consciousness, while objectivism does just the opposite, failing to recognize that social reality is to some extent shaped by the conceptions and representations that individuals make of the social world. In his critique of objectivism Bourdieu writes, in the conclusion to Distinction, that 'the representation which individuals and groups inevitably project through their practices and properties is an integral part of social reality. A class is defined as much by its being-perceived and by its being, by its consumption - which need not be conspicuous to be symbolic - as much as by its position in the relations of production."l Yet his reservations about objectivism (which Bourdieu finds more acceptable than subjectivism in that it is a necessary first step in any social analysis) in no way imply acceptance of theories which posit some sort of creative free will with the ability to constitute meaning, or that the constituted significations of actions and works should be reduced to the conscious intentions of their authors.1.I In Bourdieu's theory, symbolic aspects of social life are inseparably inter twined with the material conditions of existence, without one being reducible to the other. In an attempt to transcend this false dichotomy, Bourdieu sought to develop a concept of agent free from the voluntarism and idealism of subjectivist accounts and a concept of social space free from the deterministic and mechanistic causality inherent in many objectivist approaches. " Bourdieu's genetic sociology or genetic structuralism which should under no circumstances be identified or confused with Lucien Goldmann's methodology - thus combines an analysis of objective social structures with an analysis of the genesis, within particular individuals, of the socially constituted mental structures which generate practice. IS It was within this framework that Bourdieu developed the concepts of habitus and {ield. The notion of habitus was conceived as an alternative to the solutions offered by subjectivism (consciousness, subject; etc.) and a reaction against structuralism's 'odd philosophy of action' which reduced the agent to a mere 'bearer' (Trager: for the Althusserians) or I
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(for expression of Levi-Strauss) Bourdieu first ous' nsci co u� ced into his theory the notion of habitusstructure. - a concept borrowed rodu olastic philosophy but also used, in a different but not totally m Sch sense, by thinkers such as Hegel, Husserl and Mauss �rorela - on the ted u� on of the French edition of Erwin Panofsky's A rchitecture gothi ° casi ue et pensee scolastique.'6 On one level Bourdieu compares the notion s generative grammar, in that it attempts to account for the �o Choe,msky' and inventive capacities of human agents, but without creativ activedistances himself from Chomsky - attributing it to a he and here mind. In sum, habitus represented a 'theoretical intention . . . universal under the philosophy of consciousness without doing to get out from away with the agent, in its truth of a practical operator of object constructions . Bourdieu formally defines habitus as the system of 'durable, transpos able dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively "regulated" and "regular" without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor."s The habitus is sometimes described as a 'feel for the game', a 'practical sense'. (sens pratique) that inclines agents to act and react in specific situations a manner that is not always calculated and that is not simply a question of conscious obedience to rules. Rather it is a set of dispositions which generates practices and perceptions. The habitus is the result of a long process of inculcation, beginning in early childhood, which. becomes a 'second sense' or a second nature. According to �ourdle�'s definition, the dispositions represented by the habitus are durable they last throughout an agent's lifetime. They are ,transposable'that in that they may generate practices in multiple and diverse fields of activity, and they are 'structured structures' in that they ineVitably incorporate the objective social conditions of their inculca tion. This accounts for the similariry in the habitus of agents from the same social class and authorizes speaking of a class habitus (in Distinc �o�., for example, Bourdieu shows statistically how the working-class a Itus generates analogous preferences across a broad range of cultural practices). Finally, the dispositions of the habitus are 'structuring Structures' through their abiliry to generate practices adjusted to specific Situations. The habitus does not negate the possibility of strategic calculation on the part of agents, but it functions in a quite different manner. In ,
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Editor's Introduction
Bourdieu's words, 'This system of dispositions - a present past that tends to perpetuate itself into the future by reactivation in similarly structured practices, an internal law through which the law of external necessities, irreducible to immediate constraints, is constantly exerted is the principle of the continuity and regularity which objectivism sees in social practices without being able to account for it; and also of the regulated transformations that cannot be explained either by the extrinsic, instantaneous determinisms of mechanistic sociologism or by the purely internal but equally instantaneous determination of spontane ist subjectivism.'19 Agents do not act in a vacuum, but rather in concrete social situations governed by a set of objective social relations. To account for these situations or contexts, without, again, falling into the determinism of objectivist analysis, Bourdieu developed the concept of field (champ). According to Bourdieu's theoretical model, any social formation is structured by way of a hierarchically organized series of fields (the economic field, the educational field, the political field, the cultural field, etc.), each defined as a structured space with its own laws of functioning and its own relations of force independent of those of politics and the economy, except, obviously, in the cases of the economic and political fields. Each field is relatively autonomous but structurally homologous with the others. Its structure, at any given moment, is determined by the relations between the positions agents occupy in the field. A field is a dynamic concept in that a change in agents' positions necessarily entails a change in the field's structure. The formulation of the notion of field also represented an attempt to apply what Bourdieu, borrowing from Cassirer, calls a relational mode of thought to cultural production. This requires a break with the ordinary or substantialist perception of the social world in order to see each element in terms of its relationships with all other elements in a system from which it derives its meaning and function. Bourdieu's initial elaboration of the concept of intellectual field (in the 1966 article 'Intellectual Field and Creative Project') was still excessively dependent on a substantialist perspective.2o The recognition of the importance of objective relationships between positions, as opposed to interactions among agents, came through a critical reading of Max Weber's socio logy of religion.21 In any given field, agents occupying the diverse available positions (or in some cases creating new positions) engage in competition for control of the interests or resources which are specific to the field in question. In the economic field, for example, agents compete for economic capital by way of various investment strategies using accumulated economic
Editor's Introduction
7
capital. But the interests and resources at stake in fields are not always material, and competition among agents - which Bourdieu sees as one universal invariant property of fields - is nOt always based on conscious calculation. In the cultural (e.g. literary) field, competition often con authority inherent in recognition, consecration and prestige. cerns theespeCIally so what Bourdleu calls the sub-field of restricted This is that is, production not aimed at a large-scale market. production,based on consecration or ptestlge IS purely symbolic and may Authonty possessIOn of mcreased economic capital. Bourdieu or may not Imply thus developed, as an integral part of his theory of practice, the concept of symboltc power based on dIverse forms of capital which are not reducible to economic capital. Academic capital, for example, derives from formal education and can be measured by degrees or diplomas held. Linguistic capital concerns an agent's linguistic competence mea sured in relation to a specific linguistic market where often unrecognized power relations are at stake.22 Two forms of capital ate particularly important in the field of cultural production. Symbolic capital refers to degree of accumulated prestige, celebnty, consecration or honour and is founded on a dialectic of knowledge (connaissance) and recognition (reconnaissance).2J Cultural capital concerns forms of cultural knowledge, competences or disposi tions. In Distinction the work in which he elaborates the concept most fully, Bourdleu defmes cultural capital as a form of knowledge, an IIlternahzed code or a cognitive acquisition which equips the social agent WIth empathy towards, appreciation for or competence in deciphering cultural relations and cultural artefacts. He suggests that 'a work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded'. The possession of thls code, or cultural capital, is accumulated through a long process of acquISItion or IIlculeation which includes the pedagogical action of the famIly Or group members (family education), educated members of the soclal formation (diffuse education) and social institutions (institutiona IIzed education)." ' like economic capital, the other forms of capital are unequally d:�;��buted among social classes and class fractions. Although the d. ent forms of capItal may be mutually convertible under certain �ap Jrcumstances (for example, the proper" kind and amount of academic ltal may be converted mto economIc capItaI through advantageous PpI acement in the job marke t), they are not reducible to each other. .' , Sses O slon f economIc capitaI does not necessarily imply possession of Cuiturf al Or symb I'IC capItaI, and vIce Bourd"leu, fact, analyses the IeId of cultural production as 'an versa. 'economic world reversed' based III
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on a 'winner loses' logic, since economic success (in literary terms, for example, writing a best seller) may well signal a barrier to specific consecration and symbolic power. It is important to recognize, however, that Bourdieu's use of economic terminology does not imply any sort of economism or economic reductionism. In fact, he sees the economic field per se as simply one field among others, without granting it primacy in the general theory of fields. To enter a field (the philosophical field, the scientific field, etc.), to play the game, one must possess the habitus which predisposes one to enter that field, that game, and not another. One must also possess at least the minimum amount of knowledge, or skill, or 'talent' to be accepted as a legitimate player. Entering the game, furthermore, means attempting to use that knowledge, or skill, or 'talent' in the most advantageous way possible. It means, in short, 'investing' one's (aca demic, cultural, symbolic) capital in such a way as to derive maximum benefit or 'profit' from participation. Under normal circumstances, no one enters a game to lose. By the same token, no one enters the literary field - no one writes a novel, for example - to receive bad reviews. In each and every field, certain interests are at stake even if they are not recognized as such; a certain 'investment' is made, even if it is not recognized as an investment. These interests and investments can be analysed in terms of an economic logic without in any way reducing them to economics, for the structural homology berween fields does not imply structural identity. The idea that there are different kinds of capital which are invested in different fields of activity in accordance with the specific interests of the field in question (and of the agents involved) allows Bourdieu to develop what he calls a 'general science of the economy of practices', within which one can analyse 'all practices, including those purporting to be disinterested or gratuitous, and hence non-economic, as economic practices directed toward the maximising of material or symbolic profit'.2s It is up to the analyst to establish through research what the specific interests of the field are and what strategies of accumulation (which may or may not be based on conscious calculation) are employed by the agents involved. Bourdieu elaborated and refined the concepts of habitus and field in the process of analysing the field of cultural production which is inseparable from his broader theory of practice. He rejects the idea, implicit in many prevailing forms of immanent analysis (and perhaps taken to its extreme in Baudrillard's sign fetishism), that symbolic forms and systems of exchange can somehow be set apart from other modes of practice. He posits instead a correspondence between social and symbo lic structures based on the systematic unity of social life and the existence of structural and functional homologies among all fields of
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The transfer of concepts from one field to another, ocial activ ity. ou rdie u suggests, possesses 'an eminent heuristic virtue, the one that gical tradItIon recogmzes In analogy' and makes it the epis temolo ble for him to attaIn a greater level of generalization of his ossi P . Ies. 26 . pnnClp I etica theor
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II Bo urdi eu's theory of the cultural field might be characterized as a radical con texru alization. It takes into consideration not only works them selves, seen relationally within the space of availab le possibilities and with in the historical development of such possibilities, but also pro duce rs of works in terms of their strategies and trajectories, based on their individual and class habitus, as well as their objective position withi n the field. It also entails an analys is of the structure of the field itself, which includes the positions occupied by producers (e.g. writers, artists) as well as those occupied by all the instances of consecration and legitimation which make cultural products what they are (the public , publishers, critics, galleries, academies and so forth). Finally , it involves an analysis of the position of the field within the broader field of power. In short, Bourdieu's theory of the field of cultural production and his extremely demanding analytical method encompass the set of social conditions of the production, circulation and consumption of symbolic goods." The very complexity of Bourdieu's model ensures that it does not fall into the reductionism of either purely internal readings or modes of external analy sis of cultural texts. The full explanation of artistic works IS to be found neither in the text itself, nor in some sort of determinant social structure. Rather, it is found in the history and structure of the field Itself, with its mult iple components, and in the relationsh ip between that field and the field of power. As Bourdieu has put it, The theory of the field [leads] to both a rejection of the direct relat ing of :�dlvldu al biography to the work of literature (or the relating of the SOCIal class" of origin to the work) and also to a rejection of internal nalys ls of an indiv idua l work or even of intertextual anal ysis. This is ecau se what we have to do is all these things at the same time. '18 For Bourdie u, the specific economy of the cultu ral field is based on a artl P Cula r form of belief concerning what constitu tes a cultural (e.g . l rary, artis Ite " tIC) work and its aesthetic or social value . In its most . tra dItlo n al a n d cano nlca ' d In ' I form - mstlt ' . utaon . a I lze ' many universities rou nd the world - this belief involves the autonomy of the work from tern al determina nts and an essen tialist notion of the absolute valu e of t e Work per se. But as Bourdieu notes, both the autonomy of the artistic
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Editor's Introduction
Editor's Introduction
ena, dating, in th e om en ph t en rec rly fai are art re pu of s rie eo field an d th ntury.29 By the ce th en ete nin e th ly on m fro y, da to m the form we know IS radically d, ute tit ns co lly cia so elf its , lue va c eti same token, aesth changmg se; of Cir tly tan ns co d an lex mp co ry ve a on t en conting factors. o Litera al on un tlt ms d an l CIa SO le ltip mu ing olv inv cumstances endently of a ep md ist eX t no do ers uc od pr ve cti pe res ir ture' art and the rizes, enables, empowers tho au ich wh rk wo me fra al on uti tit ins x ple com orporated mto any mc be st mu rk wo me fra is Th m. the s ize itim and leg g of cu ltu ral dm an rst de un h ug ro tho a ide ov pr to s nd ete pr an aly sis that . goods an d practices. .mg beyond Int ernal an al YSI' S go of s an me a s ide ov pr ld fie of n rio no The cation, both .of pli ex l na ter ex d an ) tic eu en rm he or st ali rm (whether fo . ntifieS Ide u dle ur Bo e. tiv uc red d an which Bourdieu sees as inadequate aly sis . The first derives an al ern int in s ion dit tra al tic ore the l tra cen twO and from traditions ms for lic bo sym of y ph so ilo ph n tia an o-K ne from the literary or the of SIS ba the as es tur uc str cal ori ist ah l, rsa ive which seek un which Bourdieu sees as d, on sec e Th .JI rld wo the of n tio ruc nst co c eti po SClentiflClty to the of ree deg a ds len it ce sin ion dit tra l rfu we po re the mo . , an aly tic al endeavour, is that of structur ali sm . . . 10 literary g, gm ran Bourdieu's objection to strictly Internal an alY SIS -Amencan New glo An to lism ma for of s nd bra ent fer dif m fro ism critic an d decon list ura uct str d an , tes tex de n tio lica exp nch Fre Cr itic is "; ply that it loo ks for structura list readings of iso lated texts - is quite sim ts themselves (the tex the hin wit her eit ts tex of on ati lan exp al fin the or wlt hm some ) on an lan exp n ow its is , rds wo er oth in is, lys ana of object x network of SOCIal sort of ahistorical 'essence' rather than in the comple possible. Bourdieu relations that makes the very existence of the texts ether conducte wh is, lys ana al ern int of des mo all at ue tiq cri s thi s direct posslbilines , gIC ate str of ld 'fie 's ult uca Fo as h suc le sca ad on a bro ' in the field of which seeks the explanatory principle of discourse xtuality', such as in 'te h wit ns cer con row nar re mo in or lf, itse rse cou dis the work of the Ru ssia n FormalistsH the true t tha ent tem sta 's son ob Jak th wi ee agr ll we y Bourdieu ma en work a literary subject of literary science is 'that which makes a giv ich makes a given wh at 'th t tha ee agr dis nly tai cer uld wo he r bu work'' 'literariness', it, e hav uld wo son ob Jak as is, rk' wo y rar lite work a t of the cep con v's no nja Ty JJ ne. alo m for of ms ter in n see especi all y when , S formulation t It tha leu urd Bo to ser clo s me co 'literary system' ls , oo sch y rar lite g sm po op .of ce ten xis coe the d rio recognizes in every pe system IS not y rar lite e Th . ion rat sec con for g ivin str or ed rat sec either con e aesthetiC on ich wh in t flic con by ven dri is her rat t bu harmonious thu s are ties per pro al rm Fo s. ion uct str con g sin po op s ate constructio� neg per pro l ma for er oth to on siti po op in is, t tha , ally on understood relati
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for Bourdieu the concept of literary system is ultimately ries.H Yet for It falls to recognize that formal properties, both past and uate, deq na i themselves socially and historically constituted, and it present, are remai ns Imprisoned by Immanent modes of analysis. By isola ting texts from the social conditions of their production, circulatio n and consumption, formalist analysis eliminates from consi deratio n the social agent as producer (e.g. the writer), ignores the obj ectiv e social relations in which literary practice occurs and avoids the question s of precisely what constitutes a work of art at a given historical moment and of the 'value' of the work, which constantly changes in accordan ce with structural changes in the field. Internal explication, furth ermore, Ignores the fact that 'what makes a given work a literary work' is a complex social and institutional framework which authorizes and sustains literature and literary practice. Bourdieu suggests that 'it can only be an unjustifiable abstraction (which could fairly be called reductive) to seek the source of the understanding of cultural productions in these productions themselves, taken in isolation and divorced from the conditions of their production and utilization, as would be the wish of discourse alialysis, which, situated on the border between sociology and linguistics, has nowadays relapsed into indefensible forms of internal analysis. Scientific analysis must work to relate to each other two sets of relations, the space of works or discourses taken as differential stances, and the space of the positions held by those who produce them.'J5 To be fully understood, literary works mUSt be reinserted in the system of social relations which sustains them. This does not imply a rejection of aesthetic or formal properties, but rather an analysis based on their position in relation to the universe of possibilities of which they are a part. In this universe of belief one must consider, in other words, 'not only the material production but also the symbolic production of the work, i.e. the production of the value of the work or, which amounts to the same thmg, of belief in the value of the work' ('The Field of Cultural roduction', chapter 1 in this volume). This includes recognition of the unctions of artistic mediators (publishers, critics agents marchands, . and so forth) as producers of the meaning and value of the academleS wO k. Rather than an instance of individual creativity (in accordance 't a Romantic conception) or 'literariness' (as the formalists would V 't), each work thus becomes an expression of the field as a whole. ' t m thiS framework, internal analysis alone is indeed untenable and redUC(lve . . . " Bourdleu s OppOSItion to external modes of analysis' especially other . logica sOCio . . . l ap�roach es, denves ' from the mechamstlc determmism whIC ' h characterizes many of them. He takes issue with analysts who
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12 Editor's Introduction
attempt, through quantitative or qualitative methods, to relate works directly to the social origin of their authors, or who seek an explanation in the groups which have commissioned works or for whom works are intended 3 6 Along these same lines, he rejects Lucien Goldm ann's theory of a 'transin dividua l subject' and the idea that the structure of a speCIfIc work 'reflects' or expresses the world view of the social group or class that produced it.37 . . IS that they of analysIs s method al statistic most with problem The first rarely question the 'sample' employed, using, more often than not, a classification of authors borrowed from standard hterary hlstones, memoirs, and biographies. In other words, the sample tends to include only consecrated writers, frequently omitting those writne . hand, a r�cognition of the value of the o which Occasions It, which IS thus deSignated as a worthy object of Iegl umare discourse (a recognition sometimes extorted by the logic of the
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The Field of Cultural Production
field. as when, for example, the polemic of the dominan t confers participant status on the challengers), and on the other hand an affirma� tion of its own legitimacy. All critics declare not only their judgement of the work but also their claim to the right to talk about it and judge it. In short, they take part in a struggle for the monopoly of legitimate discourse about the work of art, and consequently in the production of the value of the work of art. (And one's only hope of producing scientific knowledge rather than weapons to advance a particular class of specific interests - is to make explicit to oneself one's position in the sub-field of the producers of discourse about art and the contribution of this field to the very existence of the object of study.)
The science of the social representation of art and of the appropriate relation to works of art (in particular, through the social history of the process of autonomization of the intellectual and artistic field) is one of the prerequisites for the constitution of a rigorous science of art, because belief in the value of the work, which is one of the major obstacles to the constitution of a science of artistic production, is part of the full reality of the work of art. There is in fact every reason to suppose that the constitution of the aesthetic gaze as a 'pure' gaze, capable of considering the work of art in and for itself, i.e. as a 'finality without an end', is linked to the institution of the work of art as an object of contemplation, with the creation of private and then public galleries and museums, and the parallel development of a corps of professionals appointed to conserve the work of art, both materially and symbolically. Similarly, the representation of artistic production as a 'creation' devoid of any determination or any social function, though asserted from a very early date, achieves its fullest expression in the theories of 'art for art's sake'; and, correlatively, in the representation of the legitimate relation to the work of art as an act of 're-action' claiming to replicate the original creation and to focus solely on the work in and for itself, without any reference to anything outside it. The actual state of the science of works of art cannot be understood unless it is borne in mind that, whereas external analyses are always liable to appear crudely reductive, an internal reading, which establishes the charismatic, creator-to-creator relationship with the work that is de manded by the social norms of reception, is guaranteed social approval and reward. One of (he effects of (his charismatic conception of the relation to the work of art can be seen in the cult of the virtuoso which appeared in (he late nineteenth century and which leads audiences to expect works to be performed and conducted from memory - which has the effect of limiting the repertoire and excluding avant-garde works, which arc liable to be played only once. 10
The Field of Cultural Production
37
cational system plays a decisive role in the generalized The eduof leg mo tImate c of e the On onsumption. this for reason is tion osi � � p : m i the Ideology of re-creation and ,creatIve readmg supplies teachers that tores aSSigned to commentary on the canonical texts - with a lec ambition the for to act as auctores. This is seen substitute ate m giti I rly in the case of philosophy, where the emergence of a body of �ost cleanal teachers was accompanied by the development of a would professio be autonomous sCience of the history of philosophy, and the propensity m and for themselves (philosophy teachers thus tend to to read works with the history of philosophy, i.e. with a pure identify philosophy commentary on past works, which are thus invested with a role exactly oppOSite to that of suppliers of problems and instruments of thought whICh they would fulfil for ongmal thmking). Given that works of art exist as symbolic objects only if they are known and recognized, that is, socially instituted as works of art and received by spectators capable of knowing and recognizing them as such, the SOCiology of art and literature has to take as its object not only the materIal produCtIon but also the symbolic production of the work i.e. the production of the value of the work or, which amounts to th; same thing, of belief in the value of the work. It therefore has to consider as contributing to production nOt only the direct producers of the work in its materiality (artist, writer, etc.) but also the producers of the meanmg and value of the work -critics, publishers, gallery directors and the whole set of agents whose combined efforts produce consumers capable of knowmg and recognizing the work of art as such in particular teachers (but also families, etc.). So it has to take into acc�unt not only, as the social history of art usually does, the social conditions of �: e productlon of artists, art critics, dealers, patrons, etc., as revealed by dICes such as SOCIal ongm, educatIon or qualifica tions' but also the . · . f the productIo SOCIaI Condmons · n of a set of objects socially constituted as works of art, i.e. the conditions of production of the field of social ag nts (e.g. museums, galleries, academies, etc.) which help to define � produce the value of works of art. In short, it is a question of ��d standmg works of art as a manifestation of the field as a whole, in Whi�� all the powers of the field, and all the determmlsms mherent in its . . lng, strUCture and functloll are concentrated. (See Figure 1 .) _
0
THE FIELD OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND THE FIELD OF POWER
�� figure 1 , the literary and artistic field (3) is contained within the field (2 ) Wh I· le possessmg a reI atlve POWer · autonomy with respect to it ' . espeelaI ly as regards its economic and political principles of hierarchiza: .
1 he
38 The Field of Cultural Production +
1 2
_
3
+
+
+
held ot Cultural Production
fact that the more autonomous it is, i.e. the more completely it e h bY logic as a field, the more it tends to suspend or reverse the I ls its own of hierarchization; but also that, whatever its degree '" ina nl principle endence, it continues to be affected by the laws of the field dep n o encompasses it, those of economic and political profit. The more ch h W lon o,"ou s the field becomes, the more favourable the symbolic power Ian ce is to Ihe most autonomous producers and Ihe more clear·cut is belween the field of restrlcled production, I n which the sion divi e h I rod uce rs produce for other producers, and the field of large-scale [Ia grande production], which is symbolically excluded and prod uclio n isc rediled (Ihis symbolically dominant definition is the one that the histo rians of art and lilerature unconsciously adopl when they exclude from their object of study writers and artists who produced for the ,"arkel and have often fallen into oblivion). Because it is a good measure o f Ihe degree of autonomy, and therefore of presumed adherence to Ihe disinlerested values which constitule the specific law of Ihe field, the degree of public success is no doubt the main differentiating factor. But lack of success is not in itself a sign and guarantee of election, and poetes maudits, like 'successful playwrights', must take account of a secondary differentialing factor whereby some poetes maudits may also be 'failed wrilers' (even if exclusive reference to the first crilerion can help them to avoid realizing il), while some box-office successes may be recognized, al least in some sectors of the field, as genuine art. Thus, al leasl in Ihe most perfectly autonomous sector of the field of cullural production, where Ihe only audience aimed at is other pro ducers (as with Symbolist poetry), the economy of practices is based, as in a generalized game of 'loser wins', on a systematic inversion of the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies: that of business (it excludes the pursuit of profit and does not guarantee any sort of correspondence between investments and monetary gains), that of power (it condemns honours and temporal greatness), and even Ihat of InSlltutlonalized cultural authority (the absence of any academic train Ing or consecration may be considered a virtue).
/ �I (:
��
�
Figure
I
tion. It occupies a dominated position (at the negative pole) in this field, which is itself situated at the dominant pole of the field of class relations ( 1 ). It is thus the site of a double hierarchy: the heteronomous principle of hierarchization, which would reign unchallenged if, losing all autonomy , the literary and artistic field were to disappear as such (so that writers and artists became subject to the ordinary laws prevailing in the field of power , and more generally in the economic field), is success, as measured by indices such as book sales, number of theatrical performances, etc. or honours, appointments, etc. The autonomous principle of hierarchization, which would reign unchallenged if the field of production were to achieve total autonomy with respect to the laws of the market, is degree specific consecration (literary or artistic prestige) , i.e. the degree of recognition accorded by those who recognize no other criterion of legitimacy than recognition by those whom they recognize. In other words, the specificity of the literary and artistic field is defined
39
One would have to analyse in these terms the relations between writers or , and publishers or gallery directors. The latter are equivocal figures, artiSts through whom the logic of the economy is brought to the heart of the sub-field of production-for-fellow-producers; they need to possess, simul taneously, economic dispositions which, in some sectors of the field, are totally alien to the producers and also properties close to those of the producers whose work they valorize and exploit. The logic of the Structural homologies between the field of publishers or gallery directors and the field of the corresponding artists or writers does indeed mean that
The Field of Cultural Production
40 The Field of Cultural Production the former present properties close to those of the latter, and this favours the relationship of trust and belief which is the basis of an exploitation presupposing a high degree of misreeognition on each side. These 'merchants in the temple' make their living by tricking the artist or writer into taking the consequences of his or her statutory professions of disi nterestedness.
This explains the inability of all forms of economism, which seek to grasp this anti-economy in economic terms, to understand this upside_ down economic world. The literary and artistic world is so ordered that those who enter it have an interest in disinterestedness. And indeed, like prophecy, especially the prophecy of misfortune, which, according to Weber, demonstrates its authenticity by the fact that it brings in no income, a heretical break with the prevailing artistic traditions proves its claim to authenticity by its disinterestedness." As we shall see, this does not mean that there is not an economic logic to this charismatic economy based on the social miracle of an act devoid of any determina tion other than the specifically aesthetic intention. There are economic conditions for the indifference to economy which induces a pursuit of the riskiest positions in the intellectual and artistic avant-garde, and also for the capacity to remain there over a long period without any . compensation. economIC
.
The Struggle for the Dominant Principle of Hierarchization The literary or artistic field is at all times the site of a struggle between the two principles of hierarchization: the heteronomous principle, favourable to those who dominate the field economically and politically (e.g. 'bourgeois art') and the autonomous principle (e.g. 'art for art's sake'), which those of its advocates who are least endowed with specific capital tend to identify with degree of independence from the economy, seeing temporal failure as a sign of election and success as a sign of compromise. ' 2 The state of the power relations in this struggle depends on the overall degree of autonomy possessed by the field, that is, the extent to which it manages to impose its own norms and sanctions on the whole set of producers, including those who are closest to the dominant pole of the field of power and therefore most responsive to external demands (i.e. the most heteronomous); this degree of autonomy varies considerably from one period and one national tradition to another, and affects the whole structure of the field. Everything seems to indicate that it depends on the value which the specific capital of write rS and artists represents for the dominant fractions, on the one hand in the
41
conserve the established order and, perhaps especially, in the ggle to ggle between the fractions aspiring to dominarion within the field of o,s,e and anstocracy, old bourgeolS,e and new bourgeoi wer (bourge o p and on the other hand in the production and reproduction of ), etC. e S1 �nomic capital (with the aid of experts and cadres). All the evidence eC that, at. a given level of overall autonomy, intellectuals are, sts gge sU . emg I , equa I y more responsive to the proportionate b s thing other of the powers that be, the less well endowed they are with sedu ction ,4 I . capita specific . . the f,eld of cultural production over the imposition of 10 le strugg The the legitimate mode of cultural production is inseparable from the stru ggle within the dominant class (with the opposition between 'artists' and 'bourgeois') to impose the dominant principle of domination (that is to say - ultimately - the definition of human accomplishment). I n this struggle, the artists and writers who are richest in specific capital and most concerned for their autonomy are considerably weakened by the fact that some of their competitors identify their interests with the dominant principles of hierarchization and seek to impose them even within the field, with the support of the temporal powers. The most heterono mous cultural producers (i.e. those with least symbolic capital) can offer the least reistance to external demands, of whatever sort. To defend their own position, they have to produce weapons, which the dominant agents (within the field of power) can immediately turn against the cultural producers most attached to their autonomy. In endeavouring to discredit every attempt to impose an autonomous principle of hierarchization, and thus serving their own interests, they serve the interests of the dominant fractions of the dominant class who obviously have an interest in there being only one hierarchy. in the struggle to impose the legitimate definition of art and literature, the most autonomous producers naturally tend to exclude 'bourgeois' wmers and artists, whom they see as 'enemy agents'. This means, lOeIde ntally, that samplin g problems cannot be resolved by one of those arbi trary decisions of positivist ignorance which are dignified by the m 'operatio nal definition' : these amount to blindly arbitrating on . ates wh,ch are mscnbed 10 realIty Itself, such as the question as to W ether such and such a group ('bourgeois' theatre, the 'popular' novel, te.) .o r such and such an individual claiming the title of writer or artist Qr ph, losoph er, or intellectual, etc.) belongs to the population of writers rtl. StS or, more precisely, as to who is legitimately entitled to . 'gna te legmmate wnters or artists. The prelimi nary reflections on the definitions of the object and the bQunda ries of the population, which studies of writers, artists and espec, a II . y, mteII eetuals, often indulge in so as to give themselves an air of
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13
.
.
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42
The Field of Cultural Production
The Field of Cultural Production
scientificity, ignore the fact, which is more than scientifically attested that the definition of the writer (or artist, etc.) is an issue at stake i � struggles in every literary (or artistic, etc.) field. IS In other words,. the field of cultural production is the sIte of struggles In whIch what IS at stake is the power to impose the dominant definition of the writer and therefore to delimit the population of those entitled to take part in the struggle to define the writer. The established definition of the writer may be radically transformed by an enlargement of the set of people who have a legitimate voice in literary matters. It follows from this that every survey aimed at establishing the hierarchy of writers predetermines the hierarchy by determining the population deemed worthy of helping to establish it. In short, the fundamental stake in literary struggles is the monopoly of literary legitimacy, i.e., illter alia, the monopoly of the power to say with authority who are authorized to call th,�mselv, writers; or, to put it another way, it is the monopoly of the power to consecrate producers or products (we are dealing with a world of belief and the consecrated writer is the one who has the power to consecrate and to win assent when he or she consecrates an author or a work - with a preface, a favourable review, a prize, etc.). While it is true that every literary field is the site of a struggle over the definition of the writer (a universal proposition), the fact remains scientific analysts, if they are not to make the mistake of universalizin the particular case, need to know that they will only ever encounter historical definitions of the writer, corresponding to a particular state of the struggle to impose the legitimate definition of the writer. There is no other criterion of membership of a field than the objective fact of producing effects within it. One of the difficulties of orthodox defence against heretical transformation of the field by a redefinition of the tacit or explicit terms of entry is the fact that polemics imply a form of recognition; adversaries whom one would prefer to destroy by ignoring them cannot be combated without consecrating them. The 'Theatre libre' effectively entered the sub· field of drama once it came under attack frO!1\ the accredited advocates of bourgeois theatre, who thus helped to produce the recognition they sought to prevent. The 'nouveaux philosophes' came into existence as active elements in the philosophical field and no longer just that of journalism - as soon as consecrated philosophers felt called upon to take issue with them. . al SOCI The boundary of the field is a stake of struggles, and the scientist's task is not to draw a dividing line between the agents involv ed in it by imposing a so-called operational definition, which is most likely to be imposed on him by his own prejudices or presuppositions, but t describe a state (long-lasting or temporary) of these struggles an therefore of the frontier delimiting the territory held by the competin g
d
43
One could thus exam ine Ihe characteristics of this boundary, S. I ag ' h ma y or may not be institutionalized, that is to say, protected by I '" di lions of entry that are tacitly and practically required (such as a Con cultural capital) or explicitly codified and legally guaranteed (e.g. �r tai n . . . . a numerus 0 f entra s nce exam inatio form n alme d at ensur ing e a11 IIIhUS). would be found thaI one It of the most significant properties of l S fiel d of cultural production, expla ining ils extreme dispersion and between rival principles of legitimacy, is Ihe extreme I e con nicts ermeabil ity of ItS frontIers and, consequently, the extreme diversity of he 'postS' it offers, which defy any unilin ear hierarchization. It is clear fro m comp arison thaI the f..ld of cultural production demands neither as much inheri ted economic capital as the economic field nor as much educational capital as the university sub-field or even sectors of the field of power such as the top civil service - or even the field of the 'libera l professions, . 1 6 However, precisely because it represents one of Ihe indeterminate sites in the social structure, which offer ill-defined posts, waiting to be made rather than ready made, and therefore extremely elastic and undemanding, and career paths which are themselves full of uncertainty and extremely dispersed (unlik e bureaucratic careers, such as those offered by the university system), it attracts agents who differ greatly in their properties and dispositions but the most favoured of whom are sufficiently secure to be able to disda in a university career and to take on the risks of an occupation which is not a 'job' (since it is almost always combined with a private income or a 'bread-and-butter' occup ation).
:�
c:e \ ;
!he 'profession' of writer or artist is one of the least professionalized there IS,
despite all the efforts of 'writers' associations', 'Pen Clubs', etc. This is shown clearly by (inter alia) Ihe problems which arise in classifying Ihese agents, who 3re able to exercise what they regard as their main occupation onl r on condition that they have a secondary occupation which provides their main income (problems very similar to those encountered in classifying sludents).
'[h e most disputed frontier of all is the one which separates the field of � I�
ral production and the field of power. It may be more or less clear ly ar ed in different periods, posilions occupied in each field may be III III are Or less tota lly inco mpa tible , moves from one univ erse to are Or less frequent and the overall distance between the the other correspond in opu ed cPatlo latlons more or less great (e.g. in lerms of social origin, nal background, et c. ).
�
The Field of Cultural Production
44 The Field o f Cultural Production The Effect of the Homologies
ortant effects imp st mo its ces du pro on cti du pro al tur cul of ld fie e Th al oppositi on through the pla y of the homologies between the fundament uring the which gives the field its structure and the op �ositions struct logies may field of power an d the field of class relations. I These homo atica lly om aut ed duc pro are ich wh s ect eff al gic olo ide to rise e giv rge . whenever oppositions at different levels are superimposed or me d hin the fiel d They are also the bas is of partial alli anc es: the struggles wit ween the bet le ugg str the of nt nde epe ind ly ire ent er nev are r we po of lo_ dominated classes and the do min ant class, and the logic of the homo hin gies between the two spaces me ans that the struggles going on wit the at two inn er field are always overdetermined and always tend to aim birds with one stone. The cultural producers, who occupy the econo mic ally dominated and sym bol ica lly dom ina nt position wit hin the field of of cultural production, tend to feel solidarity with the occupants the s economically and culturally dominated positions wit hin the field of clas ed relations. Such alliances, based on homologies of position com bin with profound differences in condition, are not exempt from misun the derstandi ngs and even bad faith. The structural affinity between che literary avant-garde and the political vanguard is the bas is of rappro for ments, between intellectual anarchism and the Symbolist movement ing to err ref me llar Ma . (e.g d nte flau are ces gen ver con ich wh in le, mp exa ances a book as an 'attentat' an act of terrorist violence) but dist are prudently ma int ain ed. The fact rem ain s that the cultural producers is, cris of s iod per in ally eci esp m, the on ed ferr con er pow the use to e abl rld, wo ial soc the of ion init def ical crit a rd wa for put to y acit cap ir by the sub vert to mo bili ze the potential strength of the dom inated classes and the order pre vai ling in the field of power. -
granted. The effects of homology are not all and always automatically nship with the tio rela ir the in ns, ctio fra ant min do the as ere wh Thus se, practice, dominated fractions, 3re on the side of nature, common sen can nO instinct, the upright and the male, and also order, reason, etc., they in their play into tion nta rese rep this of ects asp ain cert g brin ger lon osed as relationship with the dominated classes, to whom they are opp t they are culture to nature, reason to instinct. They need to draw on wha domin s clas ir the ify just to er ord in s, tion frac ed inat dom the by offered her than of ation, to themselves as we ll. The cul t of art and the artist (rat rgeois 'art the intellectual) is one of the necessary components of the bou poin t c listi itua spir its e', d'om ent plem 'sup a gs brin it ch whi to g' of livin . of honour.
45
Even in rhe case of the seemingly most heteronomous forms of as journalism, adjustment to demand is not prod uction, such u ral . t I cU uct 0 f a conscIOus arrangement between producers and cond ro p the It results from the correspondence between the space of the rs. me u s ers, and therefore of the products offered, and the space of the uc d ro p whICh IS brought about, on the basis of the homology consumers, two spaces, only through the competition between the between the through the strategies and imposed by the correspondence p roducers space of possible position-takings and the space of posi between the . the logIC of the objective competition words, by obeYing other In tions. berween mutually exclUSive pOsitions within the field the various categories of producers tend to supply products adjusted t� the expecta tions of the vanous positions In the field of power, but without any conscious striving for such adjustment. If the various positions in the field of cultural production can be so easil y charactenzed In terms of the audience which corresponds to them, thiS IS because the encounter between a work and its audience (which may be an absence of Immed �ate audience) is, strictly speaking, a cOIIICldence which IS not explained either by conscious, even cynical ad justment (though there are exceptions) or by the constraints of commission and demand. Rather, it results from the homology between pOSItions occupied In the space of production, with the correlative posltion·taklngs, and positions in the space of consumption; that is, in thiS case, In the field of power, with the opposition between the ommant and the dominated fractions, or in the field of class relations, hlth the Opposition between the dominant and the dominated classes. In t case of the relation between the field of cultural production and the f Ie d of power, we are dealing with an almost perfect homology between . two chlastlc structures. J ust as, In t h e d ommant class' economic capital . Increases as one moves from t he domlnate " d to the dominant fractions ' . In . th e opposite way, so too in the field of whereas cultura I capita " I vanes cultur al production economic profits increase as one moves from the , autonom ous' p0 I e to t h e 'heteronomous' pole, whereas specific profits i ncrease " . d·IreCtlon. . In the 0ppome S·Iml I arI y, the secondary opposition Which dIvldes · . the most heteronomous sector into 'bourgeois art' and . 'in dUStnal' art clearly corresponds to the opposition between the dom Ina n t and the do mi nated classes.
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.
.
18
THE STRUCTURE OF THE FIELD
Iiete ro nom . from demand, which may take the form Y anses of personal co"''''; SSlon (formulated by a 'patron' in Haskell 's sense of a protector .
The Field o f Cultural Production t, wh ich ma y be or client) or of the sanction of an autonomous marke hip to the audien ce anticipated or ignored. Wi thi n thi s logic, the relations se of interest sen the in st ere int cal liti po or mic no eco y, ctl exa re mo , and , constitute one fit pro l ca liti po or c mi no eco d ate rel the in d an s in succes us, i of the bases for evaluating the producers and their products. Th str ct ans that application of the autonomous principle of hierarchization me ir degree the to ing ord acc d she gui tin dis be l wil ts duc pro and ers duc pro is evidence of success with the aud ience, which, it tends to be assumed, of their interest in the economic and political profits secured by success. The du ality of the principles of hierarchization means that there are nis few fields (other than the field of power itself) in which the antago m n between the occupants of the polar positions is more total (withi the lim its of the interests link ed to membership of the field of power) . n Perfectly illustrating the distinction between relations of interactio and s the structural relations which constitute a field, the pol ar individual ma y never meet, ma y even ignore each other systematically , to the extent of refusing each other membership of the sam e class, and yet their the practice remains determined by the negative relation which unites m . It could be said that the agents involved in the literary or artistic field ma y, in extreme cases, hav e nothing in common except the fact of taking istic part in a struggle to impose the legitimate definition of literary or art production. I . The hie rarchy by degree of real or supposed dependence on audien ce, s ect refl ich wh , one r the ano h wit s rlap ove lf itse y nom eco the or s succes al' the degree of specific consecration of the audience, i.e. its 'cultur es. qua lity and its supposed distance from the centre of the specific valu g Thus, within the sub-field of production-for-producers, which recoof nizes onl y the specific principle of legitimacy, those wh o are assured sumed the recognition of a certain fraction of the other producers, a pre from in o, aga wh se tho to d ose opp are n, itio ogn rec us mo thu pos of ex ind rio r infe an to ed gat rele are , eria crit c cifi spe the of t oin ndp the sta the test con , esy her of del mo the h wit e anc ord acc in o, wh position and r e eith ld, -fie sub us mo ono aut the hin wit nt ina dom legitimation principle to rn retu a of e nam the in or ple nci pri n atio itim leg new a of e nam in the et, rk ma the t of tha d, fiel the of e pol er oth the at ise, ew Lik . an old one ry e ocl h-s 'hig ure sec to e nag ma o wh s hor aut fit, pro ic and of econom re a o wh se tho to d ose opp are ion rat sec con ois successes and bourge ls, e nov al rur s of hor aut the s ces suc ar' pul condemned to so-called 'po music-hall artists, chansonniers, etc.
46
.
The Duality of Literary Hierarchies and Genres
e th ich wh in iod per In the second hal f of the nineteenth century, the eS i ch rar hie two se the , my ono aut um xim literary field attained its ma
The Field of Cultural Production
47
m see
to co rres pond, in the first place, to the specifically cultural h y of the genres - poet�y, the novel and drama - and secondarily arc r e i h ierarchy of ways of US111 g them which, as is seen clearly in the h e th to the thea tre and espeCially rhe novel, varies with the position of case of iences reached 111 the speCifICally cultural hierarchy. aud . the
Th e literary field is itself defined by its position in the hierarchy of the arts, which vanes from one penod and one country to another. Here one can on ly allude to th e effect of the hierarchy of the arts and in particular to the dom mance wh lch poetry, an mtellectual art, exerted until the sixteenth cent� ry � ver pai nting, a manual arr,zo so that, (or example, the hierarchy of pICtorial genres tended to depend on their distance - as regards the subject and the more or Iess erudite manner of treating it - from the most . . elaborate model of poetic dIScourse. It is well known that throughout the nineteenth cenru ry, and perhaps until Duchamp, the stereotype which . relegated. the p a inter to a purely manual genre ('stupid as a painter') perSIsted, despi te the � ncreaslng exchange of symbolic services (partly, no doubt, because the palmers were generally less rich in cultural capital than . we know, for example, that Monet, the son of a Le Havre the writers; grocer, a.nd Renoir, the son of a Limoges tailor, were much intimidated in the meetings at the Cafe Guerbois on account of their lack of education). In the case of th e field of painting, autonomy had to be won from the hterary field too, with the emergence of specific criticism and above all the . win to break free from the writers and their discourse by producing an intrinSically polysemlc work beyond all discourse, and a discourse about . the work whICh declares the essential inadequacy of all discourse. The h IStory of the rel ations between Odilon Redon and the writers - especially uysmans - shows 111 a� exemplary way how the painters had to fight for tonomy from the Ittterateur who e�hances the illustrator by advancing . . . h mself and to assert the irredUCibility of the pictorial work (which the � profeSSional cntlc IS more ready to recognize).!1 The same logic can be used to analyse the relations between the composers and the poets· the concern to use without being used, to possess without being possessed led sO�e composers (Debussy, for example) to choose to set mediocre t�xts whIC h would not eclipse them.
� �
" From the ' economIC pomr 0f rei IIV · I y stable, despite cyclical ex mp e, that
: �
' View, the hierarchy is simple and fluctuations related to the fact for th e more economically profitable the various genre; the ' rnare str ongl y and d !tect ' Iy th ey are affected by recession.22 At the top of the h'lerarchy . d rama � wh'ICh , as aII 0 bservers note, secures big profits IS Prov'lded by an essentially bourgeois, Parisian, and therefore relatively restrICted , a d ' u nUm ber of lenee - for a very few producers (because of the small rare eXc theatres). At the bottom is poetry,. which ' with a few , very eplio ns ( such as a few successes In verse drama), secures
48
The Field of Cultural Production
virtually zero profit for a small number of producers. Between the two is the novel, which can secure big profits (in the case of some natural ist novels), and sometimes very big profits (some 'popular' novels), fo r a relatively large number of producers, from an audience which may extend far beyond the audience made up of the wnters themselves, as in the case of poetry, and beyond the bourgeois audience, as in the case of theatre, into the petite bourgeoisie or even, especially through municipal libraries, into the 'labour aristocracy'. From the point of view of the symbolic hierarchies, things are less simple since, as can be seen from Figure 2, the hierarchies according to distance from profits are intersected by hierarchies internal to each of the genres (i.e. according to the degree to which the authors and works conform to the specific demands of the genre), which correspond to the social hierarchy of the audiences. This is seen particularly clearly in the case of the novel, where the hierarchy of specialities corresponds to the hierarchy of the audiences reached and also, fairly strictly, to the hierarchy of the social universes represented. The complex structure of this space can be explained by means of a simple model taking into account, on the one hand, the properties of the different arts and the different genres considered as economic enterprises (price of the product, size of the audience and length of the economic cycle) and, on the other hand, the negative relationship which, as the field increasingly imposes its own logic, is established between symbolic profit and economic profit, whereby discredit increases as the audience grows and its specific competence declines, together with the value of the recognition implied in the act of consumption. The different kinds of cultural enterprise vary, from an economic standpoint, in terms of the unit price of the product (a painting, a play, a concert, a book, etc.) and the cumulative number of purchasers; but they also vary according to the length of the production cycle, particularly as regards the speed with which profits are obtained (and, secondarily, the length of time during which they are secured). It can be seen that, although the opposition between the short cycle of products which sell rapidly and the long cycle of products which sell belatedly or slowly is found in each of the arts, they differ radically in terms of the mode of profit acquisition and therefore, because of the connection that is made between the size of the audience and its social quality, in terms of the objective and subjective relationship between the producer and the market. There is every difference between painters who, even when they set themselves in the avant-garde, can expect to sell to a small number of connoisseurs (nowadays including museums) works whose value derives
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older, more 'bourgeois' (executives, the professions, businles,spt'o and is prepared to pay high prices for shows of pure enl:ert:ain whose conventions and staging correspond to an aesthetic that has changed for a century. Between the 'poor theatre' which caters to dominant-class fractions richest in cultural capital and poorest economic capital, and the 'rich theatre', which caters to the rra(:li richest in economic capiral and poorest (in relative terms) in capital, stand the classic theatres (Comedie Fran�aise, Atelier), are neutral ground, since they draw their audience more or less eqlla from all fractions of the dominant class and share parts of constituency with all types of theatre. 1 2 Their programmes too neutral or eclectic: 'avant-garde boulevard' (as the drama critic of Croix put it), represented by Anouilh, or the consecrated ava H-!;arae. GAMES WITH MIRRORS
This structure is no new phenomenon. When Fran�oise Dorin, in Toumant, one of the great boulevard successes, places an aV.anlt author in typical vaudeville situations, she is simply rediscovering for the same reasons) the same strategies which Scribe used Camaraderie, against Delacroix, Hugo and Berlioz: in 1 836, to re'ISSI.m a wo"rthy public alarmed by the outrages and excesses of the Scribe gave rhem Oscar Rigaur, a poet famed for his funeral odes exposed as a hedonist, in short, a man like others, ill-placed to call bourgeois 'grocers'.14 Fran�oise Dorin's play, which dramatizes a middle-brow plav1Nri attempts to convert himself into an avant-garde playwright, can regarded as a sort of sociological test which demonstrates how opposition which structures the whole space of cultural operated simultaneously in people's minds, in the form of systems classification and categories of perception, and in objective through the mechanisms which produce the complementary )OSI between playwrights and their theatres, critics and their ne'ws The play itself offers the contrasting portraits of two theatres: on the. hand, technical clarity and skill, gaiety, lightness and frivolity, French' qualities; on the other, 'pretentiousness camoufl ostentatious starkness', 'a confidence-trick of presentation', ourlessness, portentousness and pretentiousness, gloomy speeches decors ('a black curtain and a scaffold certainly help . . .') In dramatists, plays, speeches, epigrams that are 'courageously joyous, lively, uncomplicated, true-to-life, as opposed to 'thinking', miserable, tedious, problematic and obscure. 'We had a bounce in .
this opposiThey think with theirs. There is no overcoming . es ·d . b3Cksi use It separates IIlte ectua s and 'bourgeols' even in the ca be . n, (Io y have most manifestly in common. All the contrasts which the stS e i nter oise Dorin and the 'bourgeois' critics mobilize in their judgements eatre (in the form of oppositions between the 'black curtain' th on \ autiful set', 'the wall well lit, well decorated', 'the actors well 'be e h 3n d hed well dressed'), and, indeed, in their whole world view, are med up in the opposition between la vie en noir and la vie en rose thoughts and rose-coloured spectacles - which, as we shall see, stems from two very different ways of denying the social y atel 'm I 1I ( 5 1 . 1110rid. fa ced with an object so clearly organized in accordance with the ca non ical opposition, the critics, themselves distributed within the space of the pres s in accordance with the structure which underlies the object classified and the classificatory system they apply to it, reproduce, in the of the judgements whereby they classify it and themselves, the within which they are themselves classified (a perfect circle from which there is no escape except by objectifying it). In other words, the different judgements expressed on Le Tournant vary, in their form and content, according to the publication in which they appear, i.e. from the greatest distance of the critic and his readership vis-ii-vis the 'intellec tual' world to the greatest distance vis-ii-vis the play and its 'bourgeois' audience and the smallest distance vis-ii-vis the 'intellectual' world. 16 .
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WHAT THE PAPERS SAY : THE PLA Y OF HOMOLOGY
The Subtle shifts in meaning and style which, from L'Aurore to Le Figaro and from Le Figaro to L 'Express, lead to the neutral discourse of Le M onde and thence to the (eloquen silence t) of Le Nouvel Observa :h"r (see Table 2) can only be fully understood when one knows that eY' accompany a steady flse III the educanonal level of the readership (IV h Ich, here as elsewhere, is a reliable indicator of the level of transmiss ion or supply of the corresponding messages), and a rise in the ro ;e �ortlon of those class fractions - public-sector executives and o �c ers - who not only read most in general but also differ from all e · groups by a particula rly high rate of readership of the papers h with t e hIghe st level of transmission (Le Monde and Le Nouvel Observa e I r) ; and, conversely, a decline in the proportion o( those fractions b g co mme ge ral butrcial and industrial employers - who not only read least in also differ from other groups by a particularly high rate of re�er � lp of the papers with the lowest level of transmission (FranceSO;r, t Auro re). To put It more simply, the structured space of dis-
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odu ces, in its own terms, the structured space of the epr r eo�rses ers and of the readerships for whom they are produced, with, at ne'vsp of the field, big commercial and industrial employers, France e one n d L'A urore, and, at the other end, public-sector executives and an and Le Nouvel Observateur, 1 7 the central positions SO" Monde Le s er h a le e �eup ied by private-sector executives, engineers and the profes bein g ° regards the press, Le Figaro and especially L 'Express, as n d a s sion is :ead more or less equally by all the dominant-class fractions ",hieh t the comme rcial employers) and constitutes the neutral point in e (e�e � verse. ' 8 Thus the space of judgements on the theatre is homolo i thIS � of the newspapers for which they are produced and s with the space go h disseminate them and also with the space of the theatres and plays \V '� b t which they are formulated, these homologies and all the games \;y alloW being made possible by the homology between each of these t paces and the space of the dominant class. S L et us now run through the space of the judgements aroused by the experimental stimulus of Fran�oise Dorin's play, moving from 'right' to 'left' and from 'right-bank' to 'left-bank'. First, L'Aurore:
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ORTHODOXY AND HERESY
The eschatological vision structuring the opposition between avant garde and 'bourgeois' art, between the material ascesis which guarantees trItual consecration and wordly success (which is marked, inter alia, Y InstItutIonal recognition - prizes, academies, etc. - and by financial re ards ), helps to disguise the true relationship between the field of cu tural produ ction and the field of power, by reproducing the opposi IIO (wh ich does not rule out complementarity) between the dominated dom inant fractions of the dominant class, between cultural power SoC\ated with less economic wealth) and economic and political r (associated with less cultural wealth), in the specific logic of the i nte ect ual held, that is, in the transfigured form of the conflict between tw aes thetics. Specifically aesthetic conflicts about the legitimate vision of °he Worl d - in the last resort, about what deserves to be represented a n the figh t way to represent it - are political conflicts (appearing in thei r rnOSt euphemized form) for the power to impose the dominant
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The Field of Cultural Production definition of reality, and social reality in particular. On the reproductive art3• constructed in accordance with the schemes of 'straight', 'straightforward' representation of reality, social reality in particular, i.e. orthodoxy (e.g., par excellence, geois theatre') is likely to give those who perceive it in accordance these schemes the reassuring experience of the immediate of the representation, that is, of the necessity of the mode of tion and of the world represented. This orthodox art would be if it were not continuously puslied into the past by the brought into the field of production by the dominated insistence on using the powers they are granted to change the world vit1l! and overturn the temporal and temporary hierarchies to which 'bouu geois' taste clings. As holders of an (always partial) delegated legitimac:;. in cultural matters, cultural producers - especially those who prodllCll solely for other producers - always tend to divert their authority to their own advantage and therefore to impose their own variant of the dominant world view as the only legitimate one. But the challenging 01 the established artistic hierarchies and the heretical displacement of tht socially accepted limit between what does and does not deserve to be preserved, admired and transmitted cannot achieve its specificall,. artistic effect of subversion unless it tacitly recognizes the fact and the legitimacy of such delimitation by making the shifting of that limit artistic act and thereby claiming for the artist a monopoly in legitimate transgression of the boundary between the sacred and the profane, and therefore a monopoly in revolutions in artistic taxonomies. The field of cultural production is the area par excellence of clashes between the dominant fractions of the dominant class, who fight there sometimes in person but more often through producers oriented to wards defending their 'ideas' and satisfying their 'tastes', and the dominated fractions who are totally involved in this struggle.37 This conflict brings about the integration in a single field of the varioUS socially specialized sub-fields, particular markets which are completely separate in social and even geographical space, in which the different fractions of the dominant class can find products adjusted to their tastes, whether in the theatre, in painting, fashion or decoration. The 'polemical' view which makes a sweeping condemnation of alle economically powerful firms ignores the distinction between thos which are only rich in economic capital, and treat cultural goods f books, plays or pictures - as ordinary products, i.e. as sources ial immediate profit, and those which derive a sometimes very substant economic profit from the cultural capital which they originally accumufe' lated through strategies based on denial of the 'economy'. The dif re rences in the scale of the businesses, measured by turnover or staff, a
The Production of Belief
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decisive differences in their relation to the 'economy' ally equ y b d e atchh am ong recently established smaller firms, separate the small ",\.hlc , rcial' publishers, often heading for rapid growth, such as Lattes, 8 'cofTm; ct from Robert Laffont), Orban, Authier or Menges,3 distin (as [)Id onhe small avant-garde publishers, which are often short-lived an arrI ee Fra nce Adele, Entente, Phebus), just as, at the other extreme, (G se �arate the 'great publisher' from the 'big publisher', a great thoneyse crated publisher like Gallimard from a big 'book merchant' like cN ielsen. . ' mto a systematic anaIYSIS' f the fIe' Id f the gaIIenes, Without entermg homology with the field of publlshmg, would lead ' h owing towethemay I h simply observe that here too the differences w ��etitio ns, h separate the galleries according to their seniority (and their tOhf c w lebrity), and therefore according to the degree of consecration and the t value of the works they own, are replicated by differences in �arkerelatio n to the 'economy'. The 'sales galleries' (e.g. Beaubourg), their having no 'stable' of their own, exhibit in relatively eclectic fashion painters of very different periods, schools and ages (abstracts as well as post-surrealists, a few European hyper-realists, some new realists), I.e. works whose greater 'accessibility' (owing to their more classic status or their 'decorative' potential) can find purchasers outside the circle of p rofessional and semi-professional collectors (among the 'jet-set execut ives' and 'trendy industrialists', as an informant put it). This enables them to pick out and attract a fraction of the avant-garde painters who have already been 'noticed' by offering them a slightly compromising form of consecration, i.e. a market in which the prices are much higher than in the avant-garde galleries.39 By contrast, galleries like Sonnabend, Denise Rene or Durand-Ruel, which mark dates in the history of painting because they have been able in their time to assemble a 'school', are characterized by a systematic slant.40 Thus in the succession of painters presented by the Sannabend gallery one can see the logic of an anistic development which leads from the 'new American painting' and p op art, with painters such as Rauschenberg, Jaspers Johns, Jim Dine, to Oldenburg, Lichtenstein, Wesselman, Rosenquist, Warhol, sometimes dassified under the label minimal art, and to the most recent innova thons of art paul/re, conceptual art and art by correspondence. Likewise, t ere IS a clear connection between the geometric abstraction which Illade the name of the Denise Rene gallery (founded in 1 945 and Inaugu rated with a Vasarely exhibition) and kinetic art, with artists such as Max Bill and Vasarely forming a sort of link between the visual ex pe"ments of the inter-war years (especially the Bauhaus) and the ° PtlCal and technological experiments of the new generation. .
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The Production of Belief 1 05
WAYS OF GROWING OLD
The opposition between the two economies, that is to say, between tw relationships to the 'economy', can thus be seen as an 0P positio0 between two life-cycles of the cultural production business, two dif� rent ways in which firms, producers and products grow old.' 1 rh trajectory leading from the avant-garde to consecration and the trajec� tory leading from the small firm to the 'big' firm are mutually exclusive The small commercial firm has no more chance of becoming a grea; co.nsecrated firm than the big 'commercial' writer (e.g. Guy des Cars Or Cecil Samt-Laurent) has of occupymg a recognized positIOn in the consecrated avant·garde. In the case of 'commercial' firms, whose sole target is the accumulation of 'economic' capital and which can only get bigger or disappear (through bankruptcy or takeover), the only perti nent distinction concerns the size of the firm, which tends to grow with time; in the case of firms characterized by a high degree of disavowal of the 'economy' and submission to the specific logic of the cultural goods economy, the chronological opposition between the newcomers and the old-established, the challengers and the veterans, the avant-garde and the 'classic', tends to merge with the 'economic' opposition between the poor and the rich (who are also the big), the 'cheap' and the 'dear', and ageing is almost inevitably accompanied by an 'economic' transforma tion of the relation to the 'economy', i.e. a moderating of the denial of the 'economy' which is in dialectical relation with the scale of business and the size of the firm. The only defence against 'growing old' is a refusal to 'get fat' through profits and for profit, a refusal to enter the dialectic of profit which, by increasing the size of the firm and consequently the overheads, imposes a pursuit of profit through larger markets, leading to the devaluation entailed in a 'mass appeal'.42 A firm which enters the phase of exploiting accumulated cultural capital runs two different economies simultaneously, one oriented towards production, authors and innovation (in the case of Gallimard. this is the series edited by Georges Lambrichs), the other towards exploiting its resources and marketing its consecrated products (with series such as the Pleiade editions and especially Folio or Idees). It is easy to imagine the contradictions which result from the incompatibility of the two economies. The organization appropriate for producing. marketing and promoting one category of products is totally unsuited for the other. Moreover, the weight of the constraints which managofe ment and marketing bring to bear on the institution and on ways e thinking tends to rule out high-risk investments - when, that is, ths authors who might give rise to them are not already turned toward n
equally may (They prestige. firm's the by discou be ishers ubl p e oth � by the fact that the 'intellectual' series tend to pass unnoticed ra;een they appear in lists in which they are 'out of place' or even � ongruous' e.g. as an extreme case, Laffont's fcarts and Change IOCes.) It goes without saying that though the disappearance of the rr� ,s founder may accelerate the process, it is not sufficient to explain a development the of logic the in inscribed is cultural of which cess ro p esses. . separate the small avant-garde firms . from the busine differences which Th and 'great publishers' have their equivalents in the differences s' 'big firm h a t can be found, among the products, between the 'new' product, porarily without 'economic' value, the 'old' product, irretrievably :emalued the 'ancient' or 'classic' product, which has a constant or dev ,yand constantl growing 'economic' value. One also finds similar differences among the producers, between the avant-garde, recruited mainly among th e (biologically) young, without being limited to a generation, 'finished' or 'ou tdated' authors or arrists (who may be biologically young) and the consecrated avant-garde, the 'classics' . It
THE CLASSICAL AND THE OLD-FASHIONED
It is clear that the primacy the field of cultural production accords to youth can, once again, be traced back to the disavowal of power and of the 'economy' which lies at the field's foundation. The reason why 'intellectuals' and arrists always tend to align themselves with 'youth' in their manner of dress and in their whole bodily hexis is that, in representations as in reality, the opposition between the 'old' and the 'young' is homologous with the opposition between power and 'bour geois' seriousness on the one hand, and indifference to power or money and the 'intellectual' refusal of the 'spirit of seriousness' on the other hand. The 'bourgeois' world view, which measures age by power or by the corresponding relation to power, endorses this opposition when it Identifies the 'intellectual' with the young 'bourgeois' by virtue of their common status as dominated fractions of the dominant group, from hom money and power are temporarily withheld.43 But the prioriry accorded to 'youth' and to the associated values of Cht nge and originality cannot be understood solely in terms of the re atlonship between 'artists' and 'bourgeois'. It also expresses the �PeclfJC law of change in the field of production, i.e. the dialectic of IStmc tion whereby institutions, schools, artists and works which are i,nevltably associated with a moment in the history of arr, which have illarked a date' or which 'become dated', are condemned to fall into the W
The Field of Cultural Production past and to become classic or outdated, to drop into the 'dustbin ' history or become part of history, in the eternal present of culture, schools and tendencies that were totally incompatible 'in their time' peacefu lly coexist because they have been canonized, academicized neutralized. 106
BEING DIFFERENT
It is not sufficient to say that the history of the field is the history of the struggle for the monopolistic power to impose the legitimate categ0riea of perception and appreciation. The stru?gle itself creates the history of the field; through the struggle the fteld given a temporal dlmensiClQ, The ageing of authors, works or schools is something quite different from the product of a mechanical slippage into the past. It is the continuous creation of the battle between those who have made their names [fait date] and are struggling to stay in view and those who cannot make their own names without relegating to the past the established figures, whose interest lies in freezing the movement of time, fixing the present state of the field for ever. On one side are the dominant figures, who want continuity, identity, reproduction; on the other, the newcomers, who seek ·discontinuity, rupture, difference, revolution. To 'make one's name' [faire date] means making one's ma'*. achieving recognition (in both senses) of one's difference from other producers, especially the most consecrated of them; at the same time, it means creatillg a IIew position beyond the positions presently occupied, ahead of them, in the avant-garde. To introduce difference is to produce time. Hence the importance, in this struggle for life and survival, of the distillctive marks which, at best, aim to identify what are often the mOSl superficial and most visible properties of set of works or producers. Words - the names of schools or groups, proper names - are SO important only because they make things. These distinctive signs produce existence in a world in which the only way to be is to be differellt, to 'make one's name', either personally or as a group. 1111 names of the schools or groups which have proliferated in recenlVC painting (pop art, minimal art, process art, land art, body art, concepn art, arte povera, Fluxus, new realism, nouvelle figuratioll, suppO"ts. surface, art pauvre, op art, kinetic art, etc.) are pseudo-concep practical classifying tools which create resemblances and differen ces : naming them; they are produced in the struggle for recognition by artists themselves or their accredited critics and function as emblue:! which distinguish galleries, groups and artists and therefore the prod they make or sell.44 IS
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The Production of Belief 107
ewcomers come into existence, i.e. accede to legitimate n e th AfeSrence or even, for a certain time, exclusive legitimacy, they dip f essari ly push back into the past the consecrated producers with ec ( they are compared, 'dating' their products and the taste of those ",.hOo 11re(11ain attached to them. Thus the various galleries or publishing \ h S s like the various artists or writers, are distributed at every hOU ��t according to their artistic age, i.e. according to the age of their (110;e of artistic production and the degree to which this generative mSc� (11e which is also a scheme of perception and appreciation, has been secularized. The field of the galleries reproduces in and ed � ni; caP,hrony the history of artistic movements since the late nineteenth major gallery was an avant-garde gallery at some time or ��rury.andEach is rhar much more famous and thar much more capable of orher,craringir (or, amounts to the same thlllg, sells thar much more onse rhe morewhICh disrant irs flomit, the more widely known and �ea rlY), its 'brand' (,geometrical abstracr' or 'American pop') but recognized also rhe more it is encapsulated in thar 'brand' (,Durand-Ruel, rhe Impressionist dealer'), in a pseudo-concept which is also a destiny. Ar every moment, in whichever field (rhe field of class srruggles, the field of rhe dominant class, the field of cultural production), rhe agents and insrirurions involved in the game are at once contemporaries and our of phase. The field of rhe present is just another name for rhe field of srruggles (as shown by rhe facr rhat an author of the past is present exactly in so far as he or she is at srake) and contemporaneiry in the sense of presence in the same present, in the present and presence of OIhers, exisrs, in practice, only in the struggle which synchronizes discordant rimes (so rhat, as I hope to show elsewhere, one of rhe major effecrs of great historical crises, of rhe events which make history [font dateJ. is rhat they synchronize rhe rimes of fields defined by specific srrucrural durations). But the srruggle which produces contemporaneity bnecarhe form of the confrontarion of different times can only rake place use rhe agents and groups it brings together are not present in the �.arne present. One only has to think of a particular field (painting, 'cra rarure Or the theatre) to see that the agents and institutions who sh, objecrively at least, through competition and conflict, are sepa d 'n time and in terms of time. One group, situared ar the vanguard, hare ave no contemporaries with whom they exchange recognition (apart fro� orher Ih urure. avant-garde producers), and therefore no audience, except in The other group, commonly called the 'conservatives', only re� nlze rhe" res�°Fr ng from contemporaries in the past. The remporal movement esr bt�sh lng rhe appearance of a group capable of 'making history' by an advanced position induces a displacement of the structUre o rhe field of the present, i.e. of the chronological hierarchy of the •
The Field of Cultural Production opposing positions in a given field (e.g. pop art, kinetic art and art). Each position is moved down one rung in the ch"onoi hierarchy which is at the same time a social hierarchy. The aV'lOt_ is at every moment separated by an artistic generation (the gap b�" two modes of artistic production) from .rhe consecrated avant-gar, which is itself separated by another artlsnc generanon from the a�a"" garde that was already consecrated at the moment it entered the field. This is why, in the space of the artlsnc fIeld as In socIal space, dlstan� between styles or lifestyles are never bener measured than in terms Of time.45 The consecrated authors who dominate the field of production also dominate the market; they are not only the most expensIve or the mOlt profitable but also the most readable and the most acceptable becauae they have become part of 'general culture' through a process Of familiarization which may or may not have been accompanied by specific teaching. This means that through them, the strategIes dlreaed against their domination always additionally hit the distinguished consumers of their distinctive products. To bring a new producer, a new product and a new system of tastes on to the market at a given moment is to push the whole set of producers, products and systems of tastes into the past. The process whereby the field of production becomes temporal structure also defines the temporal status of taste. Because the different positions in the hierarchical space of the field of production (which can be equally well identified by the names of institutions, galleries, publishers and theatres or by the names of artists or schools) are at the same time tastes in a social hierarchy, every transformation of the structure of the field leads to a displacement of the structure of tastes, i.e. of the system of symbolic distinctions between groups. Oppositions homologous with those existing today between the taste ofl avant-garde artists, the taste of 'intellectuals', advanced 'bourgeois' tas e and provincial 'bourgeois' taste, which find their means of expresslOn O8 markets symbolized by the Sonnabend, Denise Rene and Durand-Rucl galleries, would have been able to express themselves equally effecl1vd1 in 1945, when Denise Rene represented the avant-garde, or in 1 875. when Durand-Ruel was in that position. This model is particularly relevant nowadays, because owing to II!' near-perfect unification of the artistic field and its history, each artl.sf4 act which 'makes history' by introducing a new position into the fte Ie 'displaces' the whole series of prevIous artlSI1C acts. Because the wh:;" series of pertinent events is practically present in the latest, in the sd ill way that the six digits already dialled on the telephone are con tame ent the seventh, an aesthetic act is irreducible to any other act m a d,[fer lld place in the series and the series itself tends towards uniqueness a 1 08
I
The Production of Belief 1 09
Marcel Duchamp points out, this explains why returns �: never been more frequent than in these times of 3e[.C pursuit of orlgmahty: ,The characteristIc of the century now p fren 1 end is that it is like a double-barrelled gun. Kandinsky and [0 an CoJ11�: invenred abstraction. Then abstraction died. No one was going K'IP any more. It came back thlrty-frve years later WIth the it out ab ik [a 'can abstract expressionists. You could say that cubism reappeared AJ11ef'., npoverished form in the post-war Paris school. Dada came back in way. A second shot, second wind. It's a phenomenon typical � 'same 'O [ :· s ce ntury. You didn't find that in rhe eighteenth or nineteenth of 'ries. After the Romantics, came Courbet. And Romanticism never I' h h h f h the pre-Rap ae 'tes aren't a re as t e Roman Even . back e m ca . th ey are separated [lCS. I are a ways apparent returns, smce rhese In fa cr, they rediscover by a negative teference to something which f om whar rhe negation (of the negation of the negation, etc.) of what ,:as itselfscove [hey redi r (when, that is, the intention is not simply of pastiche, a parody which presupposes all the intervening history),,7 In the present s[age of the artistic field, there is no room for naivete, and every act, every gesture, every event, is, as a painter nicely put it, 'a sort of nudge or wink between accomplices' ' 's In and through the games of distinc tion, these winks and nudges, silent, hidden references to other artists, past or present, confirm a complicity which excludes the layperson, who is a l ys bound to miss what is essential, namely the interrelations and interactions of which the work is only the silent trace. Never has the very structure of the field been present so practically in every act of production. Never roo has the irreducibility of the work of cultural production to the artist's own labour appeared so clearly. The primary reason is that the new definition of the artist and of artistic work brings the artist's work closer to that of the 'intellectual' and makes it more dependent ;han ever on 'intellectual' commentaries. Whether as critics but also the eaders of a school (e.g. Restany and the new realists), or as fellow travellers contributing their reflexive discourse to the production of a Wrork which is always in part its own commentary or to reflection of an � r which often itself incorporates a reflection on art, intellectuals have e re so directly participated, through their work on art and the a IIVSert, befo o�eself'n an artistic work which always consists partly of working on artist. Accompanied by historians writing the chronicles of rh;" dISascovaneries, by philosophers who comment on their 'acts' and who in pret dis�tngu and over-interpret their works, artists can constantly invent the ,shi ng strategies on which their artistic survival depends, only by PUt;109 ,nto their pracrice the practical mastery of the objective truth of As ity. ·bil ' iffeve sry les have
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The Field of Cultural Production their practice, thanks to the combination of knowingness and calculation and innocence, faith and bad faith that is required mandarin games, cultivated games with the inherited culture, common feature is that they identify 'creation' with the introduction deviations [ecartsJ, which only the initiated can perceive, with forms and formulae that are known to all. The emergence of th' definition of the artist and his or her craft cannot be independently of the transformations of the artistic field. The consti tion of an unprecedented array of institutions for recording, preserv' and analysing works (reproductions, catalogues, art journals, museu� acquiring the most modern works, etc.), the growth in the perSOIlllll employed, full-time or part-time, in the celebration of works of art, the increased circulation .of works and artists, with great internatiollll exhibItIons and the IncreaSIng number of chaInS of galleries wi' branches in many countries - all combine to favour the establishment af an unprecedented relationship between the body of interpreters and the work of art, analogous to that found in the great esoteric traditions; such an extent that one has to be blind not to see that discourse abo�� work is not a mere accompaniment, intended to assist its perception appreciation, but a stage in the production of the work, of its meanine and value. But once again it is sufficient to quote Marcel Duchamp:
The Production of Belief 1 1 1
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But to come back to your ready-mades, I thought that Rl Mutt, the signature on The Fountain, was the manufac turer's name. But in the article by Rosalind Krauss, I rcadi 'R. Mutt, a pun on the German, Armut, or poverty'; 'Poverty' would entirely change the meaning of The FolIIf' tain. M.D. Rosalind Krauss? The redhead? It isn't that at all. You caD deny it. Mutt comes from Mott Works, the name of a bif firm that makes sanitary equipment. But Mott was toO close, so I made it Mutt, because there was a strip cartooO in the papers in those days, Mutt and Jeff, everybody knC'f it. So right from the start there was a resonance. Mutt wIJ a fat little guy, and Jeff was tall and thin . . . I wantedad' different name. And I added Richard . . . Richard is a go. . name for a loo! You see, it's the opposite of poverty ' But not even that, just R. - R. Mutt. What possible interpretation is there of the Bicycle . Whe� Q. Should one see it as the integration of movement Into t"" work of art? Or as a fundamental point of departure, I I the Chinese who invented the wheel? Q.
That machine has no intention, except to get rid of the appearance of a work of art. It was a whim, I didn't call it a work of art. I wanted to throw off the desire to create works of art. Why do works have to be static? The thing - the bicycle wheel - came before the idea. Without any intention of making a song and dance about it, not at all so as to say '[ did that, and nobody has ever done it before me.' Besides, the originals have never been sold. What about the geometry book left out in the weather? Q. Can one say that it's the idea of integrating time and space? With a pun on 'geometrie dans I'espace' (solid geometry) and 'temps', the rain and sun that transforms the book? No, no more than the idea of integrating movement and M.D. sculpture. It was a joke. A pure joke. To denigrate the solemnity of a book of principles. Here we see, directly exposed, the injection of meaning and value by commentary and commentary on commentary - to which the na"ive but knowing exposure of the falsity of the commentary contributes in its turn. The ideology of the inexhaustible work of art, or of 'reading' as re·creation masks - through the quasi-exposure which is often seen in matters of faith - the fact that the work is indeed made not twice, but a hundred times, by all those who are interested in it, who find a material symbolic profit in reading it, classifying it, deciphering it, comment ing on it, combating it, knowing it, possessing it. Enrichment accompa nies ageing when the work manages to enter the game, when it becomes a stake in the game and so incorporates some of the energy produced in �he struggle of which it is the object. The struggle, which sends the work Into the past, is also what ensures it a form of survival; lifting it from the slale of a dead letter, a mere thing subject to the ordinary laws of ageing, Ihe struggle at least ensures it has the sad eternity of academic debate.49 or
The Market of Symbolic Goods
3 The Market of Symbolic Goo ds Theories and schools, like microbes and globules, devour each orner and, through their struggle, ensure the contin u ity of life.
M. ProuSt, Sodom a"d Gomorrah
THE LOGIC OF THE PROCESS OF AUTONOMIZATION
Dominated by external sources of legitimacy throughout the middle ages, part of the Renaissance and, in the case of French court lile, throughout the classical age, intellectual and artistic life has progresl: ively freed itself from aristocratic and ecclesiastical tutelage as well .. from its aesthetic and ethical demands. This process is correlated willi the constant growth of a public of potential consumers, of increasina social diversity, which guarantee the producers of symbolic goods minimal conditions of economic independence and, also, a competJDI principle of legitimacy. It is also correlated with the constitution of � ever-growing, ever more diversified corps of producers and merchan� 1 symbolic goods, who tend to reject all constraints apart from techmCJ imperatives and credentials. Finally, it is correlated with the multipli.CI"l tion and diversification of agencies of consecration placed in a situanOl of competition for cultural legitimacy: not only academies and sal�� but also institutions for diffusion, such as publishers and theamu ,J r impresarios, whose selective ope�ations are invested with a truly cultcOlI' legitimacy even if they are subordinated to economic and social straints. I . The autonomization of intellectual and artistic production IS thcJ correlative with the constitution of a socially distinguishable categorY . " g 'de4 o rec to professional artists or intellectuals who are less inclined n ha rules other than the specifically intellectual or artistic traditions ure down by their predecessors, which serve as a point of depart •
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also increasingly in a position to liberate their are ey Th e r ·s from all external constraints, whether the moral censure and r�pru raducr p sr e(1 c programmes of a proselytizing church or the academic controls ae �I ecrives of political power, inclined to regard art as an instrument and �aganda . This process of autonomization is comparable to those af pr� r realms. Thus, as Engels wrote to Conrad Schmidt, the appear in ar ef law as such, i.e. as an 'autonomous field', is correlated with a .nce·�n of labour that led to the constitution of a body of professional dIVIS;S. Max Weber similarly notes, in Wirtschaft und Cesellschaft, that UJ rls ' rationalization' of religion owes its own 'auto-normativity' rh�� arive independence of economic factors - to the fact that it rests on r development of a priestly corps with its own interests. r �he process leading to the development of art as art is also correlated transformed relations berween artists and non-artists and wirh ,rhe artISts. ThIS transformation leads to the estabhshment hence wirhvelother af a relati y autonomous artistic field and to a fresh definition of the arrist's function as well as that of his art. Artistic development towards uronomy progressed at different rates, according to the society and afield of artistic life in question. It began in quattrocento Florence, with rhe affirmation of a truly artistic legitimacy, i.e. the right of artists to legislate within their own sphere - that of form and style - free from subordination to religious or political interests. It was interrupted for cwo centuries under the influence of absolute monarchy and - with the Counrer-reformation - of the Church; both were eager to procure artists a social position and function distinct from the manual labourers, yet not integrated into the ruling class. This movement towards artistic autonomy accelerated abruptly with rhe Industri al Revolution and the Romantic reaction. The development of a veritable cultural industry and, in particular, the relationship b�tween the daily press and literature, encouraging the mass production o works produced by quasi-industrial methods - such as the serialized Story (or, in other fields, melodrama vaudeville) and -coincides with the e�tensio n of the public, resulting from the expansion of primary n, which turned new classes (including women) into consumers :fUCatlo culture.' The development of the system of cultural production is ac c th orn panied by a process of differentiation generated by the diversity of ubhcs at which the different categories of producers aim their pc'l ts. U Symbolic goods are a two-faced reality, a commodity and a � � SY b IC obJe ct. Their specificall y cultural value and their commercial value re malO relatively independent, although the economic sanction m ay c to reinforce their cultural consecration.] B aOrne n apparent paradox, as the art market began to develop, writers a n iar tISts found themselves able to affirm the irreducibility of the work 0
The Field of Cultural Production of art to the status of a simple article of merchandise and, at the time, the singularity of the intellectual and artistic condition.. process of differentiation among fields of practice produces favourable to the construction of 'pure' theories (of economics, law, art, etc.), which reproduce the prior differentiation of the st(uctures in the initial abstraction by which they are constituted. emergence of the work of art as a commodity, and the appearance distinct category of producers of symbolic goods specifically des the market, to some extent prepared the ground for a pure theoty of that is, of art as art. It did so by dissociating art-as-commodity art-as-pure-signification, produced according to a pLlfely isillterc intent for purely symbolic appropriation, that is, delectation, irreducible to simple material possession. The ending of dependence on a patron or collector and, � generally, the ending of dependence upon direct commissions, with ... development of an impersonal market, tends to increase the liberty Gf writers and artists. They can hardly fail to notice, however, that thia liberty is purely formal; it constitutes no more than the condition Gf their submission to the laws of the market of symbolic goods, that is, a form of demand which necessarily lags behind the supply of tit commodity (in this case, the work of art). They are reminded of thit demand through sales figures and other forms of pressure, explicit diffuse, exercised by publishers, theatre managers, art dealers. It followJ that those 'inventions' of Romanticism - the representation of culture al a kind of superior reality, irreducible to the vulgar demands of ecOllQl mics, and the ideology of free, disinterested 'creation' founded on !hi spontaneity of innate inspiration - appear to be just so many reactiO!hill to the pressures of an anonymous market. It is significant thatn of appearance of an anonymous 'bourgeois' public, and the irruptiO " methods or techniques borrowed from the economic order, such�. collective production or advertising for cultural products, coincides pt � the rejection of bourgeois aesthetics and with the methodical attem ." distinguish the artist and the intellectual from other commoners blt positing the unique products of 'creative genius' against interchangevaju: products, utterly and completely reducible to their commodityed, a5 Concomitantly, the absolute autonomy of the 'creator' is affirm ego" his claim to recognize as recipient of his art none but an alterposes another 'creator' - whose understanding "of works of art presup identical 'creative' disposition.
The Market of Symbolic Goods
1 14
It
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CTURE AND FUNCTIONING OF THE FIELD OF TH E STRU RESTRICTED PRODUCTION
ction and circulation of symbolic produ goods is defined as of ld fie e "fh S stem of obJective relations among dIfferent Instances, functionally thf'n�d by their role in the division of labour of production, reproduc de and diffusion of symbolic goods. The field of production per se [lO" its own structure to the opposition between the field of restricted s . owedlle I d ' I system pro cu d uClng a tura goo s (and the Instruments as tion these goods) objectively )'0 destined for a public ing of priat o pr ap o� cers of cultural goods, and the field of large-scale cultural du P;odlletion, specifically organized with a view to the production of destined for non-producers of cultural goods, 'the public �ulrurale'.goods to the field of large-scale cultural production, which at larg toIn contrast the laws of competition for the conquest of the largest submits market, the field of restricted production tends to develop its possible own criteria for the evaluation of its products, thus achieving the truly cultural recognition accorded by the peer group whose members are both privileged clients and competitors. The field of restricted production can only become a system object ively p roducing for producers by breaking with the public of non producers, that is, with the non-intellectual fractions of the dominant class. This rupture is only the inverse image, in the cultural sphere, of the relations that develop between intellectuals and the dominant fractions of the dominant class in the economic and political sphere. From 1 830 literary society isolated itself in an aura of indifference and rejection lowards the buying and reading public, i.e. towards the 'bourgeois'. By effect of circular causality, separation and isolation engender further separation and isolation, and cultural production develops a dynamic autonomy. Freed from the censorship and auto-censorship consequent On d tect confrontation with a public foreign to the profession and eoco untenng WIthin. the corps of producers itself a public at once of . . entlcs and accomp I"Ices, It tends to bey its own logic, that of the co��'nual outbiddi ng inherent to the dialecti cultura c of l distinct ion. e onomy of a field of restricted production can be measured by its POWaut er to define its own criteria for the production and evaluation of it cOs"�orrOducts. This implies translation of all external determinations in cUI;u �'ty with its own principles of functioning. Thus, the more legi/a producers form a closed field of competition for cultural eXte;lll�cr' the more the internal demarcations appear irreducible to any na actors of economic, political or social differentiation.s an
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The Field of Cultural Production It is significant that the progress of the field of restricted Dr,o, towards autonomy is marked by an increasingly distinct tendency criticism to devDte itself to the task, not Df producing the Istr·u appropriation - the more imperatively demanded by a work the it separates itself from the public - bur of providing a interpretation for the benefit of the 'creators'. And so, tiny admiration societies' grew up, closed in upon their own esoteriCislll, simultaneously, signs of a new solidarity between artist and emerged. This new criticism, no longer feeling itself qualified formulate peremptory verdicts, placed itself unconditionally at � servICe of the arnst. It attempted scrupulously to deCIpher his or htt intentions, while paradoxically excluding the. public .of non-produC4llt from the .entlre bUSiness by attestlng, through ItS 'lnsplred' readings, . intelligIbIlity of works whIch were bound to remain unintelligible .. those not sufficiently integrated into the producers' field.6 Intellectu4 and artists always look suspiciously - though nor without a certlli fascination - at dazzlingly successful works and authors, sometimes It the extent of seeing wordly failure as a guarantee of salvation in Ibe hereafter: among other reasons for this, the interference of the 'genenl public' is such that it threatens the field's claims to a monopoly of cultural consecration. It follows that the gulf between the hierarchy of producers dependent on 'public success' (measured by volume of sales fame outside the body of producers) and the hierarchy dependent upoa the degree of recognition within the peer competitor group undoubtedlp constitutes the best indicator of the autonomy of the field of restricted production, that is, of the disjunction between its own principles at evaluation and those that the 'general public' - and especially the nOlI" intellectual fraction of the dominant class - applies to its productions. No one has ever completely extracted all the implications of [he fact that [he writer, the artist, or even the scientist writes not only for le public, but for a public of equals who are also competitors. Few peop depend as much as artists and intellectuals do for their self-image uPj the image others, and particularly other writers and artists, have lY them. There are', writes Jean-Paul Sartre, 'quali[ies that we acquire on ,? through the judgements of others.'7 This is especially so for the quab of a writer, artist or scientist, which is so difficult to define becau��iI exists only in, and through, co·optation, understood as the ClrcUu ' relations of reciprocal recognition among peers.s Any act of cult . production implies an affirmation of its claim to cultural legiti maCY' when different producers confront each orher, it is still in the na. me their claims to orthodoxy or, in Max Weber's terms, to the and monopolized use of a certain class of symbolic goods; when [h':Y recognized, it is [heir claim [0 orthodoxy that is being rec:o
The Market of Symbolic Goods
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the fact that oppositions express themselves in terms of by ,.irnesosca l excommunication, the field of restricted production can never recdipor na[ed by one orthodoxy without continuously being dominated b< rr"en eral question of orthodoxy itself, that is, by the question of the g e h bY r a defi ning the legitimate exercise of a certain type of cultural (ri[etn e It follows that the degree of autonomy enjoyed by a field of prac cl�e d production is measurable by the degree to which it is capable n crioning as a specific market, generating a specifically cultural type res!un o� rci[ and value irreducible to the economic scarcity and value of Y o scaood in question. To put it another way, the more the field is rhe �Ie ofs functioning as a field of competition for cultural legitimacy, c�P�ore individual production must be oriented towards the search for r �rurallY pertinent features endowed with value in the field's own CU omy. This confers properly cultural value on the producers by e�on ing [hem with marks of distinction (a speciality, a manner, a style) dow �ecognized as such within the historically available cultural taxonomies. Consequently, it is a structural law, and not a fault in nature, that draws intellectuals and artists into the dialectic of cultural distinction ofren confused with an all-our quest for anIJ' difference that might raise rhem out of anonymity and insignificance. The same law also imposes limi[s within which the quest may be carried on legitimately. The bru[ality with which a strongly integrated intellectual or artistic com munity condemns any unorthodox attempt at distinction bears witness to [he fact that the community can affirm the autonomy of the specifically cultural orders only if it controls the dialectic of cultural distinction, continually liable to degenerate into an anomic quest for difference at any price. from all that has just been said that the principles of .dlffI[erfollows entia[ion regarded as most legitimate by an autonomous field are those which most completely express the specificity of a determinate type of practice. In the field of art, for example, stylistic and technical pnnClples tend to become the privileged subject of debate among producers (or their interpreters). Apart from laying bare the desire to de those artists suspected of submitting to external demands, the �;�IrIumat ron of mode of the over function, of the primacy of form presentation over the object of representation, is the most specific � e PreSSlon of the field's claim to produce and impose the principles of a p,�per y cultural legitimacy regarding both the production and [he \ of re eptlon thi g satd, an art-work. I Affirming the primacy of the saying over the co� tralnl gsacrificing the 'subject' to the manner in which it is treated, co�es dowO language in order to draw attention to language, all this n to an affirmation of [he specificity and [he irreplaceability Of th e product and producer. Delacroix said, aptly, 'All subjects become ed
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The Field of Cultural Production good through the merits of their author. Oh! young artist, do you subject? Everything is a subject; the subject is you yourself, ImpreSSIon, your emotions before nature. You must look with in self, and not around yoU." 2 The true subject of the work of nothing other than the specifically artistic manner in which artists the world, those infallible signs of his mastery of his art. principb, in becoming the dominant object of position-taki ngs oppositions between producers, are ever more rigorously perfected fulfIlled In works of art. At the same time, they are ever systematically affirmed in the theoretical discourse produced by through confrontation. Because the logic of cultural distinction producers to develop original modes of expression - a kind of axiomatic in rupture with its antecedents - and to exhaust possibilities inherent in the conventional system of procedures, different types of restricted production {painting, music, novels, poetry, etc.} are destined to fulfil themselves in their most sIlO aspects - those least reducible to any other form of expression. The almost p�rfect circularity and reversibility of the relations . cultural production and consumption resulting from the objectivdj closed nature of the field of restncted production enable the develop! ment of symbolic production to take on the form of an almost reAe,,", history. The incessant explication and redefinition of the foundations af his work provoked by criticism or the work of others determines decisive transformation of the relation between the producer and hiI work, which reacts, in turn, on the work itself. Few works do not bear within them the imprint of the system af posI tions In relation to which their originality is defined; few works do nOt contain indications of the manner in which the author conceived the novelty of his undertaking or of what, in his own eyes, distinguished II from h,s contemporanes and precursors. The objectification achieved by criticism which elucidates the meaning objectively inscribed in a work; Instead of subjecting it to normative judgements, tends to play ' determining role in this process by stressing the efforts of artists incI writers to realize their idiosyncrasy. The parallel variations in critic.ofl interpretation, in the producer's discourse, and even in the structUre the work itself, bear witness to the recognition of critical discourse � the producer - both because he feels himself to be recognized throughf ' and because he recognizes himself within it. The public meaning o . work in relation to which the author must define himself originates. the process of circulation and consumption dominated by the objecri1f relations between the institutions and agents implicated in the proces51 The social relations which produce this public meaning are deICe",;1 by the relative position these agents occupy in the structure of the 118
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The Market of Symbolic Goods
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and author e.g. between relations, These n. productio ed 'cr l s re f � f r publisher and critic, author and criric, are revealed as the opobhs is, that the work, tion' of 'publica the on nt attenda ons relati of f; ,nse!l1cbo!l1ing a public object. In each of these relations! each of these itS bnes ngages not only h,s own Image of other factors In the relatlon �g� �c�nsecrated or exorcised author, avant-garde or traditional pub shhIP etc. } which depends on his relative position within the field, but hs e h s image of the other factor's image of himself , i.e. of the social ve position in the field. �dIse�rOI':ion of his objecti the gulf separating experimental art, which originates appreciate to suffices it forms, art , popular from dialectic internal own d's fiel e ,n t: popular of nary logic evolutio the between on oppositi the r ide f�ongsuage and that of literary language. As this restricted language is and reproduced in accordance with social relations dominated �duceduest distinction, its use obeys what one might term 'the �� rheouq snessforprinci Its manipulation demands the almost reflexive graruit of schemple'. of expression which are transmitted by an knowledge explicitly esaimed at inculcating the allegedly appropriate educarion caregones. 'Pure' poerry appears as the conscious and methodical application of a system of explicit principle s which were at work, though only in a diffuse manner, in earlier writings. Its most specific effects, for example, derive from games of suspense and surprise, from the consecrated berrayal of expectations, and from the gratifying frustration provoked by archaism, preciosity, lexicological or syntactic dissonances, the destruction of stereotyped sounds or meaning sequences, ready-made formulae, idees re�ues and commonplaces. The recent history of music, whose evolution consists in the increasingly professionalized search for tech nical solutions to fundamentally technical problems, appears to be the culmination of a process of refinement which began the moment popular music became subject to the learned manipulation of profes SIOnals. But probably nowhere is this dynamic model of a field tending � closure more completely fulfilled than in the history of painting. �vlng banished narrative content with impressionism and recognizing Y specifically pictorial principles, painting progressively repudiated �I� tra ces and sensual hedonism. Painting was thus set on the road oftonaturalism an explicit employment of the most characteristically pi;n�to �,a l principles questionthe to tantamount was which painting, of ° 0 these principles and, hence, of painting itselL I 3 ne need only compare the functional logic of the field of restricted prod UCtlo with the laws governing both the circulation of symbolic gOod s andn the an aUtonOmously production of the consumers to perceive that such dedeveloping field, making no reference to external t
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The Field of Cultural Production mands, tends to nullify the conditions for its acceptance OUtSId· field. To the extent that its products require extremely scarce e ments of apptopriation, they are bound to precede their mark have no clients at all, apart from producers themselves. they tend to fulfil socially distinctive functions, at first in between fractions of the dominant class and eventually, in among socIal classes. By an effect of circular causality, the .
,r between supply and demand contributes to the artists' delterlnir steep themselves in the search for 'originality' (with its COIl1 Ideology of the unrecognized or misunderstood 'genius'). This about, as Mnold Hauser has suggested ,14 by placing them in economIc Circumstances, and, above all, by effectively ensuring Incommensurablhty of the specifically cultural value and value of a work. 1 20
The Market of Symbolic Goods
et
t one canno re fully comp ly, quent Conse ing it. renew of ble a a nt e S c �u ctiom ng of the fIeld of restncted production as a sIte of acy - and for 9h �nd ethIIle.Ion'for properly cultural consecration - i.e. legitim · h I· pS between the o", p wer t o grant it unless one analyses the re. i atlons . e Ist, t on one h h an f conS , d e Ihe pOS I. nstan ces of consecration. Thes . IC sym f b i· goo S, va fl. OU . d suc h a as capItal ve the conser which . s . on . tlons (suc.h as the educainstltuumll s,. and, on the other hand, of insntu ",u. se syste 01) which ensure the reproducno.. n .f agents 1m ue b d . h h e WIt t . al . of action expression, concepnon, Imagtn. anon, perception, lIOn es orl ' e 1 7 ar n'. d itio ate pos ltiv dis 'cu the c gfc to ,peC! I n, ular in uctio partic the reprod of of the system case the in as . Just system, so the field of producttO n and d· ffuSlo. n can OnI y be cational Od if one treats it as a fIeld f compentlon for the edu fully uonlydersto the legitimate. exercise. of symb.olic violence. Such a monop ofallow · n d h restr as pro d uetto lCte t f fteld the us e to s deftn n uctio str con competition for the power to grant cul turaI consecratlon, bute . scene of n l lf a f I cratio on u unett conse f to also as the system specifically desiggned mtnate type of veil as a sytem for reproducin producers of a determing them. All le .of consu �� I :ural goods, and the consumer capabrelatio ns WIth their own work) internal and external relations (including that agents of production, reproduction and d,ffUSIon manage to establish are mediated by the structure of relanons between the tnstances or institutions claiming to exercise a specifically cultural authority. In a given space of time a hierarchy of relations IS est.abhshed between the different domains the works and the agents having a varying amount of legitimizing auth�rity. This hierarchy, which is in fact dynamic, expresses the structure of objective relations of symbolic force between Ihe producers of symbolic goods who produce for eIther a restricted or an unres tri cted publi c and are consequently consecrated by dIfferentially leg.itimized and legitimizing institutions. Thus it also includes the objective relations between producers and dI fferent agents of legItima tiOn, specific institutions such as academies, museums, learned societies a�d the educational olic sanctions, especially by symb system; their by p aCtlSlOg of a all mamfestatlons CIple of fo c rm prin oof op the ta n tio · · recognm ' rate a certatn. type a f wark and on, these authorities consec rtain type of cultivated person. These agents of consecration, ��:eov er, may be organizations whICh are not fully tnsmutlonahzed: I.I terary crrc . Ies' critical circles salons and. sma II groups surroun d·109 a famous auth . . a or reVIew or a hterary or bltsher, or associating . with a pu art I t . m i S lC agazi ne. Finally, this hierarchy includes, of course, the objecte t ncrtelloatin ons between the various instances of legitimation. Both the and on the latter depend their of the mode of functioning � . . '""SttIO n In· the hIerarchICal structure of the system they constitute; · th at c
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TH E FIELD OF INSTANCES OF REP RO DU CTION AN D CONSECRAnON
Works produced by the field of restricted production· are 'PII!e\ 'abstract' and 'esoteric'. They are 'pure' because they demand of !be receIver a speCIfIcally aesthetic disposition in accordance with !be prinCIples of their production. They are 'abstract' because they call for , multlphCIty of speCIfIC approaches, in contrast with the undifferentia. art of primitive societies, which is unified within an immediatd1 ccessible spectacle involving music, dance, theatre and song. 15 They �eso teric, for. all the above reasons and because their complex structWI continually Imphes tacit. reference to the entire history of previOUf structures, and IS acceSSIble only to those who possess practical theoretical mastery of a refined code, of successive codes, and of the code of these codes. So, while consumption in the field of large-scale cultural productiOn � more or less Independent of the educational level of consumers (which . qutte understandable, since this system tends to adjust to the level aI demand), works of restricted art owe their specifically cultural rarilf. and thus their function as elements of social distinction' to the rarit)' 01 the instruments with which they ma y be deciphered. This rarity is function of the unequal distribution of the conditions underlying thI acquisition of the specifically aesthetic- disposition and of the c� . d indIspensable to the deCIphering of works belonging to the fIel restricted production. 16 It follows that a complete definition of the mode of restricted production must include not only those institutions which ensure thI production of competent consumers, but also those which produc;C lit
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The Field of Cultural Production is, they depend on the scope and kind of authority - conservativ challenging - these instances exercise or pretend to exercise overt public of cultural producers and, via their critical judgements, oVer public at large. By defending cultural orthodoxy or the sphere of legitimate against competing, schismatic or heretical messages, which may Pro,�. radical demands and heterodox practices among various publics system of conservation and cultural consecration fulfils a fun� homologous to that of the Church which, according ro Max Wtbe.i should 'systematically establish and delimit the new victorious d0 ctritlt .or defend the old one against prophetic attacks, determine what has lIIiI does not have sacred value, and make it part of the laity's faith\ Sainte-Beuve, together with Auger, whom he cites, quite naturally tUIIIII to religious metaphor to express the structurally determined logic of that legitimizing institution par excellettce, the Academie Fran,aise: 'Once. comes to think of itself as an orthodox sanctuary (and it easily does so� the Academie needs some external heresy to combat. At that time, ill 1 8 1 7, lacking any other heresy, and the Romantics were either not y« born or had not yet reached manhood, it attacked the followers and imitators of Abbe Delille. [In 1 824, AugerI opened the session with . speech amounting to a declaration of war and a formal denunciation of Romanticism: "A new literary schism", he said, "is appearing today." "Many men, brought up with a religious respect for ancient teachin., consecrated by countless masterpieces, are worried by and nervous of the projects of this emergent sect, and seem to wish to be reassured.· This speech had a great effect: it brought happiness and jubilation to the adversaries. That witty swashbuckler, Henri Beyle (Stendhal), was repeat it gaily in his pamphlets: "M. Auger said it, I'm a sectarian !" Obliged to receive M. Soumet that same year (25 November), M. Augu redoubled his anathemas against the Romantic dramatic form, "againll that barbarian poetics they wish to praise", he said, and which violated. in every way, literary orthodox. Every sacramental word, orthodOX1t sect, schism, was uttered, and he could nOt blame himself if the Academie did not transform itself into a synod or a counciL>!' Tbt functions of reproduction and legitimation may, in accordance With historical traditions, be either consecrated into a single institutio�,rna�e was the case in the seventeenth century with the French Acade tlle Royale de Peinture,20 or divided among different institutions such as r:; educational system, the academies, and official and semi-official instl tions or diffusion (museums, theatres, operas, concert halls, erc' ) 'ddt these may be added certain institutions which, though less Wi dI recognized, are more narrowly expressive of the cultural producers, sU If as learned societies, literary circles, reviews or galleries; these are rnO
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reject the judgements of the canonical institutions the more o t d chne cultural field asserts its autonomy.
in e th Iy s inten e er varied .
structure of the relations the among agents of ev oW }-sIervation and consecration may be, the length of 'the process of pv1nre on�zation', culminating in consecration, appears to vary in propor e that their authority is widely recognized and can be degre e th (Ion Competition for consecration, which assumes and posed. im �IY durf rS the power ro consecrate, condemns those agents whose province con e t ited to a state of perpetual emergency. Avant-garde critics fall s lim IS m�his category, haunted by the fear of compromising their prestige as �It�overers by overlooking some discovery, and thus obliged to enter SO mutual attestations of charisma, making them spokespersons and ns, and sometimes even publicists and impresarios, for artists :��oreticir aart. Academies (and the salons the nmeteenth century) or the nd thei museum both claiming a monopoly over the consecra ;orps ofcontempocurators, rary producers, are obliged to combine tradition and tion of innovation. And the educational system, claiming a monopoly I<mperheredconsecration of works of the past and over the production and over consecration (through diplomas) of cultural consumers, only posthu mously accords that infallible mark of consecration, the elevation of works into 'classics' by their inclusion in curricula. Among those characteristics of the educational system liable to affect rhe structure of its relations with other elements of the system of production and circulation of symbolic goods, the most important is surely its extremely slow rate of evolution. This structural inertia, deriving from its function of cultural conservation, is pushed to the limit by the logic which allows it to wield a monopoly over its own reproduction. Thus the educational system contributes to the mainte nance of a disjunction between culture produced by the field of production (involving categories of perception related to new cultural cts) and scholastic culture; the latter is 'routinized' and ration Pa�Odu I" a ed by - and in view of - its being inculcated. This disjunction , mfests itself notably in the distinct schemes of perception and ciation involved by the two kinds of culture. Products emanating ��Popre m the field of restricted production require other schemes than those a r�ady maste red by 'cultiv public the ated '. rcated, it is impossible to understand the peculiar characteristics orhf res rnd tncted Culture without appreciating its profound dependence on � g/ e heanonal system, the indispensable means of its reproduction and . . Among the transformations which occur, the quasi sY�tWt 'athe�'matllanon and theorizing imposed on the inculcated content are les an d neu s evident than their concomitant effects, such as 'routinization' tralization'. .
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The Field of Cultural Production The time-lag between cultural production and scholastic tion, or, as is often said, between 'the school and living art', is not only opposition between the field of restricted production and system of institutions of cultural conservation and consecration. A.s field of restricted production gains in autonomy, producers tend aS � have seen, to think of themselves as intellectuals or artists by ' di' right, as 'creators', that is as al/ctors 'claiming authority by virtu f their charisma' and attempting to impose an al/ctoritas that recogn� o no other principle of legitimation than itself (or, which amounts to I:: same thing, the authority of their peer group, which is often redu even in scientific activities, to a clique or a sect). They cannot but r � moreover, the institutional authority which the educational system� consecratory institution, opposes to their competing claims. The� a.: embittered by that type of teacher, the lector, who comments on and explains the work of others (as Gilbert de la Porree has already pointed out), and whose own production owes much to the professional practict of its author and to the position he or she occupies within the system of production and circulation of symbolic goods. We are thus brought the principle underlying the ambivalent relations between producers and scholastic authority. If the denunciation of professional routine is to some extent substantial with prophetic ambition, even to the point where this may amount to official proof of one's charismatic qualifications, it is none the less true that producers cannot fail to pay attention to the judge ments of university institutions. They cannot ignore the fact that it is these who will have the last word, and that ultimate consecration caD only be accorded them by an authority whose legitimacy is challenged by their entire practice, their entire professional ideology. There aR plenty of attacks upon the university which bear witness to the fact that their authors recognize the legitimacy of its verdicts sufficiently reproach it for not having recognized them. The objective relation between the field of production and the educational system is both strengthened, in one sense, and undermined. in another, by the action of social mechanisms tending to ensure a sOlI pll of pre-established harmony between positions and their occupathe (elimination and self-elimination, early training and orientation br family, co-optation by class or class fraction, etc.). These mechaOlsu:i orient very diverse individuals towards the obscure security of a cult functionary's career or towards the prestigious vicissitudes of inde� dent artistic or intellectual enterprise. Their social origins, pred0tld! nantly petit-bourgeois in the former case and bourgeois in the la ;, dispose them to import very divergent ambitions into their actlvl tte.�l though they were measured in advance for the available positions
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er oversimplifying the opposition between petit-bourgeois instituf Be IOservants and the bohemians of the upper bourgeoisie, two points lionlald be made. First, whether they are free entrepreneurs or state sho ; yees, intellectuals and artists occupy a dominated position in the e"'� �f power. And second, while rhe rebellious audacity of the auctor fieayl find its limits wIthin the inherited ethICS and politics of a bourgeOIs "p,r " ary education, artists and especially professors coming from the Jtlr'e bourgeoisie are most directly under the control of the state. The pe e after all, has the power to orient intellectual production by means S(rSl�bsidies, commissions, promotion, honorific posts, even decora o ns all of which are for speaking or keeping silent, for compromise or abstentton. {lO
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" RE LATIONS BETWEEN THE FIELD OF RESTRICTED PRODUCTION AND THE FIELD OF LARGE-SCALE PRODUCTION
Without analysing the relations uniting the system of consecratory insritutions with the field of producers for producers, a full definition of rhe relationship between the field of restricted production and the field of large-scale production would have been impossible. The field of large-scale production, whose submission to external demand is charac rerized by the subordinate position of cultural producers in relation to rhe controllers of production and diffusion media, principally obeys the imperatives of competition for conquest of the market. The structure of irs socially neutralized product is the result of the economic and social condirions of irs production 22 Middle-brow art [i'art moyen] , in its Ideal-rypical form, is aimed at a public frequently referred to as 'average' [moyen ]. Even when it is more specifically aimed at a determinate caregory of non-producers, it may none the less eventually reach a SOCIally heterogeneous public. Such is the case with the bourgeois rheatre of the belle-epoque, which is nowadays broadcast on television. It legitimate to define middle-brow culture as the product of the e of large-scale production, because these works are entirely �e�rIne d by their public. Thus, the very ambiguity of any definition of the public' or the 'average viewer' very realistically designates the f���ra.ogef pote ntial action which producers of this type of art and culture l a : hc1tly assign themselves, and which determines their technical and e r eri C choices. IS
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�e fOllOWing remarks by a
French television writer, author of some Wenty novels, recipient of the Prix [ntera/lie and the Grand prix du
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roman de I'Acadbnie Fra1Ujaise, bears this out: 'My sole ambition is to b easily read by the widest possible public. I never attempt a "masterpiec I� and I do 1I0t write /or intellectuals; I leave that to others. For mc, a g , one that gnps you within the first three pages.'l.I It follows that book IS the most specifIC charactenstl cs of middle-brow 3rt, such as reliance immediately accessible technical processes and aesthetic effects Or t systematic eXelusion of all p� (entialJy controversial themes, or tho�e liabl , or that section of the public, derive from the to shock this soc;aI conditions in which it is produced.
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Middle-brow art is the product of a productive system dominated by � quest for onvestment profitability; this creates the need for the wid.,,'"'"; possible publoc. It. cannot,. moreover,. content. itself with seeking .. II1tensl fy consumption within a determonate social class; II IS obliged onent ItSelf towards a generalization of the social and cultural com� tlon of thiS publoc. ThiS means that the production of goods, even whet they are aimed at a specific statistical category (the young, womCilf football fans, stamp collectors, etc.), must represent a kond of hi = socia· I denomlnator. On the other hand, middle-brow art is most the culmination of transactions and compromises among the varioat categones of agents engaged in a technically and socially differentiated field of production. These transactions occur not only between trollers of the means of production and cultural producers - who lie more or less locked into the role of pure technicians - but also bctwcell different categories of producers themselves. The latter come to use· their specific competencies to guarantee a wide variety of cultural interes1S whole. Simultaneously reactivating the self-censorship engendered by the vast ondustnal and bureaucratic organizations of cultural productioa through invocation of the 'average spectator'. In all fields of artistic life the same opposition between the twO modes of production is to be observed, separated as much by the nature of thef works produced and the political ideologies or aesthetic theories o those who disseminate them as by the social composition of the publiCS to which they are offered. As Bertrand Poirot-Delpech has observed. 'Apart from drama critics, hardly anyone believes - or seems to believerd �hat th� various spectacles demanding qualification by the wo , theatre , stili belong to a songle and identical art form. The potenDa! publocs are so distinct; ideologies, modes of functioning, styles anndd actors on offer are so opposed, inimical even, that professional rules a solidarity have practically disappeared.'l5 .
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Consigned by the laws of profitability to 'concentration' and to inregr3� {ioll into world-wide 'show-business' production circuits, (he comme rci al
1 27
in France survives today in three forms: French (or English, etc.) fre a the ' of foreign shows supervised, distributed and, to some extent, ons s r Y'e 'ni zed by those responsible for the original show; repeats of the mOSt g or ss ful works for the traditional commercial theatre; and, finally, e suc )ligent comedy for the enlightened bourgeoisie. The same dualism, e In form of downright cultural schism, exists, i n Western Europe at ing the the musical sphere. Here the opposition between the artificially ast, in ported market for works of restricted scope and the market for up s produced and d lstnbuted by the music-hall and o mmerCi al work, industry, is far more brutal than elsewhere. ing ,ord e
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beware of seeing anything more than a limiting parameter One should in the opposition between the two modes of production of construction goods, which can only be defined in terms of their relations symbolic a songle umverse one always finds the entire with each other. Wlthon works produced with reference to the range of intermediaries between one hand, and works determined by an intuitive restricted market on theexpectatio ns of the widest possible public on the representation of the other. The range might include avant-garde works reserved for a few initiates within the peer-group, avant-garde works on the road to consecration, works of 'bourgeois art' aimed at the non-intellectual fractions of the dominant class and often already consecrated by the most official of legitimizing institutions (the academies), works of middle-brow art aimed at various 'target publics' and involving, besides brand-name culture (with, for example, works crowned by the big Ioterary prizes), imitation culture aimed at the rising petite bourgeoisie (pop�larizing literary or scientific works, for example) and mass culture, that IS, the ensemble of socially neutralized works. In fact, the professional ideology of producers-for-producers and their �pokespeople establishes an opposition between creative liberty and the aws of the market, between works which create their public and works �reated by their public. This is undoubtedly a defence against the Ise�chantment produced by the progress of the division of labour, the esta hshment of various fields of action - each involving the rendering ;X�rlClt of its peculiar functions - and the rational organization of e� nlcal means appertaining to these functions. IS no mere chance that middle-brow art and art for art's sake are bo � p roduced by highly professionalized intellectuals and artists, and at: b�th charac by the same valorization of technique. In the one case hiS onentsterized production towards the search for effect (understood bath s effect produced on the public and as ingenious construction) and, i� the other, It onents of form for its producllon towards the cult Own sake. The latter orientation is an unprecedented affirmation of the
The Field of Cultural Production most characteristic aspect of professionalism and thus an affirrnatiOQ rhe specificity and irreducibility of producers.
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This explains why certain works of middle-brow art may present form al characteristics predisposing them to enter into legitimate culruce. The f t at producer� of Westerns have to work within the very strict cony tl ons of a heavIly stereotyped genre leads them to demonstrate their highl professl Onahzed techmcal virtuoSIty by continually referring back t prevIous solutions - assumed [Q be know � - in the solutions they provide , problems, and they are continually bordering on pastiche 0 to canonical parody of � r�vious authors, against whom they measure themselves. genre contamlng ever more references to the history of that genre calls for a second-degree reading, reserved for the initiate, who can only grasp the �ork's ",uances and subtleties by relating it back to previous works. By introdUCing subtle breaks and fine variations, with regard to assumed expectations, the play of internal allusions (the same one that has always been practised by lettered traditions) authorizes detached and distanced perception, quite as much as first-degree adherence, and calls for either erudite analysis or the aesthete's wink. 'Intellectual' Westerns are the logical conclusion of these pure cinematographic language games which assume, among their authors, as much the cinephile's as the cineaste's inclinations.
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which, in turn, stems from their very unequal power of on ati r coosecrion.26 The various kinds of cultural competence encountered in a stlOsCociety derive their social value from the power of social discrimi diaSS cl , and from the specifically cultural rarity .conferred on them by a[looposition In. the system f cuIturaI competencIes; th·IS system IS. more the; integrated according to the social formation in question, but it is or e�ss hiera rchized. To be unaware that a dominant culture owes its alW� features and social functions - especially that of symbolically (!l Ig3l1rimizing a form of domination - to the fact thar it is not perceived as e h in short, to ignore the fact of legitimacy is either to condemn SU�s�lf a class-based ethnocentrism which leads the defenders of OOstricted culture to ignore the material foundations of the symbolic of one culture by another, or implicitly to commit oneself to d�minatiomnwhIch a shameful recognition of the legitimacy of the pop ulis culture betrays effort to rehabilitate middle-brow culture. This dom inantrelativisminisanaccomplished distinct but objectively cultural zed cultures in a class societybyastreating if they were the cultures of such hierarchi perfectly independent social formations as the Eskimos and the Feu giansP Fundamentally heteronomous, middle-brow culture is objectively condemned to define itself in relation to legitimate culture; this is so in the field of production as well as of consumption. Original experimen tation entering the field of large-scale production almost always comes up against the breakdown in communication liable to arise from the use of codes inaccessible to the 'mass public'. Moreover, middle-brow art cannot renew its techniques and themes without borrowing from high an or, more frequently still, from the 'bourgeois art' of a generation or so earlier. This includes 'adapting' the more venerable themes or sub jects, or those most amenable to the traditional laws of composition m the popular arts (the Manichaean division of roles, for example). In thIS sense, the history of middle-brow art amounts to no more than that Imposed by technical changes and the laws of competition. However agents may dissimulate it, the objectively established hier archICal difference between the two productive systems continually ;mposes itself. Indeed, the practices and ideologies of consumers are �t rgely determined by the level of the goods rhey produce or consume in hIer archy. The connoisseur can immediately discern, from such ;S r ere points as the work's genre, the radio station, the name of the tpheatrnce e, gallery or director, the order of legitimacy and the appropriate o�� re to be adopt in case. ed each e between legitimate and illegitimate, imposing itself in th� f�eldOppofOsitIon symbolic goods with the same arbitrary necessity as the di ti Cllon between the sacred and the profane elsewhere, expresses the o
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More profoundly, middle-brow art, which is characterized by tried and proven techniques and an oscillation between plagiarism and parody most often linked with either indifference or conservatism, displays one of the great covert truths underlying the aestheticism of art for art'. sake. The fact is that its fixation on technique draws pure art into covenant with the dominant sections of the bourgeoisie. The latter recognize the intellectual's and the artist's monopoly on the productiOD of the work of art as an instrument of pleasure (and, secondarily, as an instrument for the symbolic legitimation of economic or political power); in return, the artist is expected to avoid serious maners, narody social and political questions. The opposition between art for art's sake and middle-brow art which, on the ideological plane, becomes trant" formed into an opposition between the idealism of devotion to art and the cynicism of submission to the market, should not hide the fact th.1l the desire to oppose a specifically cultural legitimacy to the prerogative of power and money constitutes one more way of recognizing th.1 business is business. What is most important is that these two fields of productiollt opposed as they are, coexist and that their products owe their unequal symbolic and material values on the market to their un(,qU; I
1 29
The Field of Cultural Production different social and cultural valuation of two modes of production . one a field that is its own market, allied with an educational which legitimizes it; the other a field of production a function of external demand, normally seen as socially and culturasl � qr inferior. This opposition between the two markets, between producers fQr producers and producers for non-producers, entirely determines lilt image writers and artists have of their profession and constitutes lilt taxonomIC prInCIple accordIng to whICh they claSSify and hierarchilt works (beginning with their . own) .. Producers for producers have overcome the contradiction In their relationship With their (limited) public through a transfigured representation of their social function, whereas in the case of producers for non-producers the qUasi. coincidence of their authentic representation and the objective truth of the writer's profession is either a fairly inevitable effect or a prior condition of the success with their specific public. Nothing could be further, for example, from the charismatic vision of the writer's 'mission' than the image proposed by the successful writer previously cited: 'Writing is a job like any other. Talent and imagination are not enough. Above all, discipline is required. It's better to force oneself to write two pages a day than ten pages once a week. There is one essential condition for this: one has to be in shape, just as a sportsman has to be in shape to run a hundred metres or to play a football match.' It is unlikely that all writers and artists whose works are objectively addressed to the 'mass public' have, at least at the outset of their career, quite so realistic and 'disenchanted' an image of their function. None the less, they can hardly avoid applying to themselves the objective image of their work received from the field. This image expresses the opposition between the two modes of production as objectively revealed in the social quality of their public ('intellectual' or 'bourgeois', for example). The more a certain class of writers and artists is defined as beyond the bounds of the universe of legitimate art, the more its members arc inclined to defend the professional qualities of the worthy, entertaininge technician, complete master of his technique and metier, against th uncontrolled, disconcerting experiments of 'intellectual' art. . There is no doubt, moreover, that the emergence of large collective production units in the fields of radio, television, cinema and journahsme as well as in scientific research, and the concomitant decline of th intellectual artisan in favour of the salaried worker, entail a tra nsform.,; tion of the relationship between the producers and their work. ThiS WI" be reflected in his own representation of his position and function in ethll'e social structure, and, consequently, of the political and the aesthely. ideologies they profess. Intellectual labour carried out collectiv within technically and socially differentiated production units, can nO
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itself with the charismatic aura attaching to traditional und o rr u s er dent production. The traditional cultural producer was a master lollg ni delpemn eans of production and invested only his cultural capital, which ofash � ' kely to be perceived as a gift of grace. The demystification of \\'teIl�ctua l and artistic activity consequent on the transformation of the In I conditions of production particularly affects intellectuals and SOCItlS�S engaged in large units of cultural production (radio, television, MJo rnalism ) . They constitute a proletaroid intelligentsia forced to expe u ce the contradiction between aesthetic and political position-takings e (l �mi ng from their inferior position in the field of production and the �t�jectiveIY conservative functions of the products of their activity. POSITIONS AND POSITION·TAKINGS
The relationship maintained by producers of symbolic goods with other producers, with the significations available within the cultural field at a given moment and, consequently, with their own work, depends very directly on the position they occupy within the field of production and circulation of symbolic goods. This, in turn, is related to the specifically cultural hierarchy of degrees of consecration. Such a position implies an objective definition of their practice and of the products resulting from it. Whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not, this definition imposes itself on rhem as a fact, determining their ideology and their practice, and its efficacy manifests itself never so clearly as in conduct aimed at transgressing it. For example, it is the ensemble of determinations inscribed in their position which inclines professional Jazz or film critics to issue very divergent and incompatible judgements destined to reach only restricted cliques of producers and little sects of devotees. These critics tend to ape the learned, sententious tone and the cult of erudition characterizing academic criticism, and to seek theore tical, political or aesthetic security in the obscurity of a borrowed language.28 s distinct from a solidly legitimate activiry, an activity on the way to A Iegltlm ation the question of practitioners with continually confronts its Its own legitimacy. In this way, photography - a middle-brow art Situated midway between 'noble' and 'vulgar' practices - condemns its prhcnnoners to create a substitute for the sense of cultural legitimacy � Ich IS given to the priests of all the legitimate arts. More generally, all ose marginal cultural producers whose position obliges them to onquer the cultural legirimacy unquestioningly accorded to the con professions expose themselves to redoubled suspicion by the e�?arta tsedthey can hardly avoid making to challenge its principles. The c
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ambivalent aggression they frequently display towards consecrato institutions, especially the educational system, without being abl e I) offer a counter-legitimacy, bears witness to their desire for recogn iti to and, consequently, to the recognition they accord to the educa tio system. All relations that a determinate category of intellectuals or artis ts ilia establish with any and all external social factors - whether econ olllI'Ye (e.g. publishers, dealers), political or cultural (consecrating authoriti such as academies) - are mediated by the structure of the field. Th u they depend on the position occupied by the category in question withiQ the hierarchy of cultural legitimacy. The sociology of intellectual and artistic production thus acquires its specific object in constructing the relatively autonomous syste m o f relations of production and circulation of symbolic goods. In doing this it acquires the possibility of grasping the positional properties that an category of agents of cultural production or diffUSion owes to its place within the structure of the field. Consequently, it acquires the capacity to explall1 those charactenstlcs which products, as posItion-takings, owe to the positions of their producers within the system of social relations of production and circulation and to the corresponding positions which they occupy within the system of objectively possible cultural positions within a given state of the field of production and circulation. The position-takings which constitute the cultural field do not all suggest themselves with the same probability to those occupying at a given moment a determinate position in this field. Conversely, a particular class of cultural position-takings is attached as a potentiality to each of the positions in the field of production and circulation (that is, a particular set of problems and structures of resolution, themes and procedures, aesthetic and political positions, etc.). These can only be defined differentially, that is, in relation to the other constitutive cultural positions in the cultural field under consideration. 'Were I as glorious as Paul Bourget,' Arthur Craven used to say, 'I'd present myself nightly In music-hall revues in nothing but a G-string, and I guarantee you I'd make a bundle.'19 This attempt to turn literary glory into a profita ble undertaking only appears at first sight to be self-destructive and comica l because it assumes a desacralized and desacralizing relationship with literary authority. And such a stance would be inconceivable for anyoni other than a marginal artist, knowing and recognizing the principles cultural legitimacy well enough to be able to place himself outside the cultural law ]O There is no position within the field of cultural prodU'd tlon that does not call for a determinate type of position-takl l1g a 'l which does not exclude, simultaneously, an entire gamut of theoretica l possible position-takings. This does not require that possible 0
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position-takings be explicitly prescribed or prohibited. But one e" ld beware of taking as the basis of all practice the strategies shf conscious lY elaborated in reference to a never more than partial ha ess of structures. In this connection one might think, for usn cio s COnro p le, of the knowledge of the present and future structure of the e"a u r market that is mobilized at the moment of a change in orienta l.b tiO i rela tions among agents and institutions of diffusion or consecra l .tl n are mediated by the field's structure. To the extent that the O _ biguous marks of recognition owe their specific form to the e er am relations (perceived and interpreted as they are in accordance e ctiv je ° yith the unconscious schemes of the habitus) they contribute to form the lI b jec tive representation which agents have of the social representation of their pOSItion wlthlll the hierarchy of consecrations. And thiS sem i-consc ious representation itself constitutes one of the mediations through which, by reference to the social representation of possible, proba ble or impossible position-takings, the system of relatively uncon scious strategies of the occupants of a given class of positions is defined. It would be vain to claim to assess from among the determinants of practices the impact of durable, generalized and transposable disposi tions, the impact of the perception of this situation and of the intentional or semi-intentional strategies which arise in response to it. The least conscious dispositions, such as those constituting the primary class habitus, are themselves constituted through the internalization of an objectively selected system of signs, indices and sanctions, which are nothing but the materialization, within objects, words or conducts, of a particular kind of objective structure. Such dispositions remain the basis upon which all the signs and indices characterizing quite varied situa tions are selected and interpreted. In order to gain some idea of the complex relations between uncon SCIOUS dispositions and the experiences which they structure - or, which m � ounts to the same thing, between the unconscious strategies engen ,ered by habitus and strategies consciously produced in response to a �tuanon designed in accordance with the schemes of the habitus - it will e necessary to analyse an exam ple. The man uscripts a publisher receives are the product of a kind of pre s eI cnon by the authors themselves according to their image of the pub li her who occupies a specific position within the space of publishers. e auth ors� image of their publisher, which may have oriented the prDdUCtlon, po Itlons IS itself a function of the objective relationship between the authors and publishers occupy in the field. The manuscripts .,: ,;,oreover, coloured from the outset by a series of determinations . Interesting, but not very commercial', or 'not very commercial, cI uded
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The Field of Cultural Production but interesting') stemming from the relationshci p between the position in the field of production (unknown yo ung author, COllse, author, house author, etc.) and the publishe r's position within system of production and circulation ('commercial' publisher' secrated or avant-garde). They usually bear the marks of the ary whereby they came to the publisher (editor of a series, reader, author', etc.) and whose authority, once again, is a function of positions in the field. Because subjective inte ntions and unconscj dIsposItions contribute to the efficacy of the objective structuresII1II hlch they ar� adjusted, their interlacing tends to guide agents to t� �natura l nIChe m the structure of the field. It will be un derst moreover, that publisher and author can only experience and inte;::::: the pre-esta blrshed harmo�y achIeved and revea led by their m.eeting as . mlrade ?� predestination: Are you happy to be publrshed by Editions de Mmult? If I had followed my instincts, I would have gone there strai. away . . . but I didn't dare; I thought they were too good for me . . . So l frrst sent my manuscnpt to Publrsher X. What I Just said about X isn't ;ery kmd! They refused my book, and ,S? I took it to Minuit anyway ' How do you get on WIth the publrsher? He began by telling me a lot of thmgs I hoped had not shown. Everything concerning time, coina.. dences.'J I The publisher's image of his 'vocation' combines the aesthetic relaoy. ism of the discoverer, conscious of having no other principle than thatof defIance of all canonical principles, with the most complete faith in 3D absolute " kind " of 'flair'. This ultimate a nd often indefinable principle behmd hIs chOIces finds itself continually strengthened and confirmed br hIs perceptIon of the selective choices of authors and by the representa tions authors, critics, the public and other publishers have of his function within the division of intellectual labour. The critic's situation is hardly any different. The works she receives have undergone a process of pre-selection. They bear a supplementary mark, that of the publishct (and, sometimes, that of author of a preface another author or another critic). The value of this mark is a function, 'once more, of the structUre of objective relations between the respe tive positions of author, pub Irsher and critic. It is also affected by the relationship of the critic to the predommant taxonomies in the critical W'orld or in the field of restricted production (for example, the nouveau roman, 'objectal literature', etc.)· 'Apart from the opening pages, which see-m to be more or less voluntar)' pastiche of the nouveau roman, L'Aubl!7ge espagnole tells a fantasti'i though perfectl y dear, story, whose d"",elopment obeys the logiC 0t dreams rather than reality.''' So the critic, suspecting the young novehs of having entered the hall of mirrors, enters there himself by describlnl what he takes for a reflection of the- nouveau roman. Schonberl
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n concert by given a the of occasio 'On of effect: type same the deScr"br eS"Is a critIC WIth a partICularly fme ear defmed a pIece for string ",y PUP lw hose harmony - as can be proved - was only a very slight qU3rti°et ment of Schubert'S, as a product bearing signs of my influence.' deve Ir such errors of identification are not rare, especially among the Even vative' critics, they may also bring profit to the 'innovators': on 'conse�t of his position, a critic may find himself predisposed in favour 3CC�" kinds of avant-?arde; accordingly he may act as an initiate, ofmm unicating the de�lphered revelation. back to the arnst frQm whom . CO ceived it. The arnst, m return, confrrms the CntlC m hIS vocatIon, he re privileged interpreter, by confirming the accuracy of his de of Ih31 "ClPherment. O n account of the specific nature of his interests, and of the structural with invested objectively rson businesspe a as position his of y guit mbi a power of cultural consecration, the publisher is more strongly sodmeined than the other agents of production and diffusion to take the n ties objectively governing relations between agents into account �egulariconsciou s strategies. The selective discourse in which he engages in his with the critic, who has been selected not merely because of his influence but also because of the affinities he may have with the work, and which m3Y even go the length of declared allegiance to the publisher and his entire list of publications, or to a certain category of authors, is an extremely subtle mixture, in which his own idea of the work combines with his idea of the idea the critic is likely to have, given the image he has of the house's publications Hence, it is quite logical and highly significant that what has become the name of a literary school (the nouveau roman), adopted by the authors themselves, should have begun as a pejorative label, accorded by a traditionalist critic to novels published by Editions de Minuit. Just as critics and public found themselves invited to seek the links that might unite works published under the same imprint, so authors were defined by this public definition of their works to the extent that they had to define themselves in relation to it. Moreover, confronted with the public's and the critics' image of them, they were encouraged to think of �emselves as constituting more than simply a chance grouping. They came a school endowed with its own aesthetic programme, its eponymous ancestors, its accredited critics and spokespersons. In short, the .most personal judgements it is possible to make of a Work, even of one's own work, are always collective judgements in the sense of position-takings referring to other position-takings through the Int�mediary of the objective relations between the positions of their �t ors within the field. Through the public meaning of the work, rOugh the objective sanctions imposed by the symbolic market upon to
The Field ot Cultural Production the producers' 'aspirations' and 'ambitions' and, in particular the degree of recognition and consecration it accords them, ;h structure of the field interposes itself between producers and thei� This. imposes a definition of thei r ambitions as either legitima lit Illegitimate accordmg to whether their position objectively implIt' tes, lit denies, their fulfilment. Because the very logic of the field condemns them to risk their cuiluqj salvation in even the least of their position-takings and to a uncertainly, for the ever-ambiguous signs of an ever-suspended ele tq, intellectuals and artists may experience a failure as a sign of electi� over-rapid or too brilliant a success as a threat of damnation. cannot ignore the value attributed to them, that is, the position thej occupy within the hierarchy of cultural legitimacy, as it is continuaUy brought home by the signs of recognition or exclusion appearing i n their relations with peers or with institu tions of consecration. For each position in the hierarchy of consecration there is a responding relationship - more or less ambitious or resigned - to !he field of cultural practices which . is, itself, hierarchized. An analysis of artistic or mtellectual traJectones attests that those 'choices' commonly imputed to 'vocation', such as choice of intellectual or artistic specialization - author rather than critic, poet rather than novelist _ and, more profoundly, everything defining the manner in which oae fulfils oneself in that 'chosen' speciality, depend on the actual and potential position that the field attributes to the different categories of agents, notably through the intermediary of the institutions of cultum consecration. It might be supposed that the laws governing intellectual or artistic 'vocations' are similar in principle to those govemintl scholastic 'choices', such as the 'choice' of faculty or discipline. Such . supposition would imply, for example, that the 'choice' of discipline be increasingly 'ambitious' (with respect to the reigning hierarchy in the university field) as one ascends towards those categories of students �IP teachers most highly consecrated, scholastically, and most favouredthe terms of social origin. Again, it might be supposed that the greaternate scholastic consecration, mediated by social origin, of a determi Uf category of teachers and researchers, the more abundant and ambirio would be their production. del Among the social factors determining the functional laws of anyyfi'!d of cultural production (literary, artistic or scientific), undoubtedl a most important is the position of each discipline or specialization eadJ the position of the different producers in the hierarchy peculiar t.o ns' 01 sub-fIeld. The migrations of labour power which drive large sectto ltJIII producers towards the currently most consecrated scientific diSClOU P (or, elsewhere, artistic genre), and which are experienced as th p
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.I ed' by vocation or determined by some intellectual itinerary and 'inSeP \mputed to the effects of fashIOn, could be merely reconverSions oft eod at ensuring the best pOSSible economic or SYm bolic return on a altll mioate kind of cultural capital. And the sensitivIty necessary to deter ut these movements of the cultural value stock exchange, the sod 0ry requisite to abandoning well-worn paths for the most .udpacor�une_seeming future, once more depend on social factors, such as op ature of the capital possessed and scholastic and social origins with Ithh:i� attendant objective chances and aspirations..33 Similarly, the inte ones of researchers manifest 10 different types categ ent differ h hic ret �actice (for example, empirical research or theory) is also a o P osite function. It is dependent, first, on the ambitions which their °f ':pation and their scholastic success and, thus, their position in the O;cipline's hierarchy allow them to form by assuring them of reasonable d success. Secondly, it. is a function of the objectively rec �c anzces of hierarchy of the very different matenal and symbolic profItS ogn i edparticular practices or objects of study are in a position to which procure. If the relations which make the cultural field into a field of (intellec only reveal their meaning and tual, artistic or scientific) position-takings function in the light of the relations among cultural subjects who are holding specific positions in this field, it is because intellectual or artistic position-takings are also always semi-conscious strategies in a game in which the conquest of cultural legitimacy and of the concomitant power of legitimate symbolic violence is at stake. To claim to be able to discover the entire truth of the cultural field within that field is to transfer the objective relations between different positions in the field of CUltural production into the heaven of logical and semiological relations of opposition and homology. Moreover, it is to do away with the question of the relationship between this 'positional' field and the CUltural field; in other words, it is to ignore the question of the dependence of the different systems of cultural position-takings consti tUting a given state of the cultural field on the specifically cultural Interests of different groups competing for cultural legitimacy. It is also to deprive oneself of the possibility of determining what particular CUI tural pOsiti these in fulfil they functions social the to owe on-takings groups' strategies. 0n quently, we can postulate that there is no cultural position 0 ta lng sethat cannot be submitted to a double interpretation: it can be related, On the hand, to the universe of cultural position-takings Con stltuent of theonespecifically cultural field; on the other hand, it can be inte eted as a consciously or unconsciously oriented strategy elabora ted� In relation to the field of allied or hostile positions.35 Research )4
The Field of Cultural Production starting from this hypothesis would doubtless find its surest in a methodical analysis of privileged references. These would conceived, not as simple indices of information exchanges (in parriC I �" implicit or explicit borrowings of words or ideas), but as so U � landmarks circumscribing, within the common battlefield, the s � network of privileged allies and adversaries proper to each catego� Of producer. 138
III
'Citatology' nearly always ignores this question, implicitly treatin g ref�. Tences to an author as an index of recognition (of indebtedn ess Or legitimacy). In point of fact this apparent function may nearly always be associated with such diverse functions as the manifestation of relations of allegiance or dependence, of strategies of affiliation, of annexation or of defence (this is the role, for example, of guarantee references, ostentatioQs references or alibi·references). We should mention here two 'ciratologislS' who have the merit of having posed a question systematically ignortd: 'People quote another author for complex reasons - to confer meaning, authority or depth upon a statement, to demonstrate familiarity with other work in the same field and to avoid the appearance of plagiatising even ideas conceived independently. The quotation is aimed at readers of whom some, at least, are supposed to have some knowledge of the work quoted (there would be no point in quoting i f this were nOt so) and to adhere to the norms concerning what may, and what may not, be attributed to it,'J6 When it is not immediately explicit and direct (as in the case of polemical or deforming references), the strategic function of a reference may be apprehended in its modality: humble or sovereign, impeccably academic or sloppy, explicit or implicit and, in this case, unconscious, repressed (and betraying a strong relationship of ambiva· lence) or knowingly dissimulated (whether through tactical prudence, through a more or less visible and na"t've will to annexation - plagiarism or through disdain). Strategic considerations may also stalk those quota tions most directly oriented towards the functions commonly recogni zed as theirs by 'citarology'. It suffices to think of what might be termed an a minima reference, which consists in recognizing a precise and clearly specified debt (by the full-length quotation of a sentence or an expression) in otder to hide a far more global and more diffuse debt. (We should nore, in passing, the existence of a maxima references, whose functions may when the vary from grateful homage to self-valorizing annexation contribution of the quoter to the thought quoted, which, in this case, must be prestigious, is fairly important and obvious.) _
The construction of the system of relations berween each ofw! categories of producers and competing, hostile, allied or neutral po o�er, which are to be destroyed, intimidated, cajoled, annexed or won
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decisive ruptute, first, with naive citatology, since it does not u rnond any but the most phenomenal relationships, and second presbeY gO cular - with that supremely naive representation of cultural i art Jnd u ;io n that takes only explicit references into account. How can we od c presence in Aristotle's texts to explicit references alone, or to'S pr Pla red uce Descartes in Leibniz's writings, of Hegel in those of Marx? We th r f ere more generally of those privileged interlocutors implicit in h � spe. itin gs of every producer, those revered antecedents whose thought the \��res he has internalized to the point where he no longer thinks s tr UC they where point the to them, through and become have them in t c e eP ate adve rsaries determining his thinking and imposing on him both rn p e and the substance of conflict. Manifest conflicts dissimulate �e ha t � llslts within the dissensus which defines the field of ideological he on se � tle in a given epoch, and which the educational system contributes to u in g by inculcating an uncontested hierarchy of themes and � d p ro ble s worthy of discussion. Given this, implicit references allow also uction of that intellectual space defined by a system of f�e constrreferences appearing so natural, so incontestable that they are common never the object of conscious position-takings at all. However, it is in relation to this referential space that all the position-takings of the different categories of producers are differentially defined. In addition to other possible functions, theories, methods and con cepts in whatever realm are to be considered as strategies aimed at installing, restoring, strengthening, safeguarding or overthrowing a determinate structure of relationships of symbolic domination; that is, they constitute the means for obtaining or safeguarding the monopoly of the legitimate mode of practising a literary, artistic or scientific activity. es a
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The Field of Cultural Production By ignoring the systems of social relations within which systems are produced and utilized, strictly internal interpretation frequently condemns itself to the gratuitousness of an arbitrary ism. In point of fact, an appropriate .construction of the object analYSIS presupposes SOCiological analYSIS of the SOCial functions at tI..'" basis of the structure and functioning of any symbolic systern. ;:e semiologist, who claims to reveal the structure of a literary Or arti' � work through so-called strictly internal analysis, exposes him Or he IIic to a theoretical error by disregarding the social conditions underl� the production of the work and those determmmg ItS functloni ng. · " A field of cultural production may have achieved virtually cornpIe.t autonomy in relation to external forces and demands (as in the case at the pure sciences), while still remaining amenable to specifically Socio\o. gical analysis. It is the job of sociology to establish . the external . for a system of sOCIal relations of productIon, cIrculation and conditions consumption necessary to the autonomous development of science art; its task, moreover, is to determine those functional laws whidl characterize such a relatively autonomous field of social relations and which can also account for the structure of corresponding syrnbolic: productions and its transformations. The principles of 'selection' object ively employed by the different groups of producers competing for cultural legitimacy are always defined within a system of social relations obeying a specific logic. The available symbolic position-takings ate, moreover, functions of the interest-systems objectively attached to the positions producers occupy in special power relations, which are the social relations of symbolic production, circulation and consumption. As the field of restricted production closes in upon itself, and affinns itself capable of organizing its production by reference to its own internal norms of perfection -excluding all external functions and social or socially marked content from the work - the dynamic of competition for specifically cultural consecration becomes the exclusive principlendlof the production of works. Especially since the middle of the ninetee century, the principle of change in art has come from within art itself, � though history were internal to the system and as if the developmen � forms of representation and expression were merely the product of T:t logical development of axiomatic systems specific to the various artS·n. explain this, there is no need to hypostatize the laws of this evolutio��) a relatively autonomous history of art and literature (or of sCle exists, it is because the 'action of works upon works', of W� 'or stl Brunetiere spoke, explains an ever-increasing proportion of artl literary production. At the same time, the field as such explicatendS dICc:II systematizes specifically artistic principles of the production a ea evaluation of the work of art. The relationship, moreover, which
The Market of Symbolic Goods
1 40
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of producer enjoys with its own production is more and more determined by its relationship with the specifically artistic �� aod norms inherited from the past, and which is, again, a of its posItion m the structure of the field of production. legitimacy appears to be the 'fundamental norm', to ural cult r�u r' the language of Kelsen, of the field of restricted production. But enI P ru d am en tal norm " as Jean Piaget has noted, 'is nothing other than Ih ls of the fact that society expression "recognizes" the normat ct tra bs Ihe a l u of this order' in such a way that it 'corresponds to the social e e a " lvty of the exercise of some power and of the "recognition" of this rea 'e or of the system of rules emanating from it'.J7 Thus, if the relative pO\�nor my of the field of restricted production authorizes the attempt to aUI,slruct a 'pure' model of the objective relations defining it and of the e ra ctions which develop within it, one must remember that this �:rmal construction is the product of the temporary bracketing-off of Ihe field of restricted production (as a system of specific power relations) from the surrounding field of the powet relations between classes. It would be futile to search for the ultimate foundation of this 'funda menIa l norm' within the field itself, since it resides in structures governed by powers other than the culturally legitimate; consequently, objectively assigned to each category of producer and its Ihe fu nctions products by its position in the field are always duplicated by the external functions objectively fulfilled through the accomplishment of its internal functions. y r C.1lego vel y e"clt� o s Ir3d ' . 0 functl� ,
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Part II -
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Flaubert and the French •
Literary Field
4 Is the Structure of Sentimental Education an Instance of Social Self-analysis ? -
have several reasons for starting this series of lectures with an analysis of Flaubert's Sentimental Education. First of all, it is one way for me to pay p articular homage to my host Victor Brombert, who is, as everyone knows, one of the most eminent Flaubert specialists. Secondly, I believe that this fascinating and mysterious work condenses all those enigmas that literature can put to those who wish to interpret it. A true example of the absolute masterpiece, the novel contains an analysis of the social space in which the author was himself located and thus gives us the instruments we need for an analysis of him. Flaubert the sociologist gives us a sociological insight on Flaubert the man. One Flaubert gives us the means to understand the particular lucidity of the other as well as the limits within which his writing is confined. This sociological content not readil y apparent, and some may think that I, as interpreter, have �serted or imposed it through my own reading of the text. In fact, as de ger g � have said, it is a veiled revelation. It is only a shrouded, � ha -hiddenmight ex�nt, to form which yields itself to our scrutiny or even, to some the gaze of the author himself. Y rea dtng of the text, which will explicitly mark out a real but hi herto Implicit structure, will necessarily come as an oversimplifica ti�n. It may seem to transform a story, a tale, into a sociologist'S model where exp unfo reseen adventure is replaced by the protocol of some ental construction. To sharpen this contrast, which throws light :h�,m"ter ary effect as well as on the scientific effect, I would like to Start wa rd Y readtng, before coming to my model, a perfectly straightfor, traditional summary of Sentimental Education. I
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146 Flaubert and the French Literary Field In Paris in the 1840s, student Frederic Moreau meets and falls I'n . . with Madame Arnoux, the wife of an art dealer who sells . engravings in a shop in the Faubourg Montmartre. vague aspirations to literary, artistic or social success and tries t ac�eptance at the home of Dambreuse, a high-society banker. �. pOinted by his reception, he falls back into self-doubt' idleness s l'� and dayd rea,:TlS. H� f"�nds himself in the centre of a group of young Martlnon, CISY, Senecal, Dussardler, Hussonnet, and it is while he� " guest at the Arnoux' home that his passion for Madame Arnou taq.. shape. He leaves Paris for a holiday at his mother's place in No� where he meets the young Louise Roque, who falls in love with hi 1ii precanous financial situation is improved by an unexpected inher�a'neti, and he leaves once more for Paris. But there he is disappointed by Madame Arnoux and he be ' .mterested In' Rosanette, a courtesan who is Monsieur Arnoux's mistcOIIIcI As com.mentators often remark, Frederic is torn between dive � temptations, rebounding from one to the other. There is Rosanett� the charms of a hfe of luxury; there is Madame Arnoux, whom he tria In vain to seduce; and, finally, there is the wealthy Madame Dambreuse, who may well help him to fulfil hiS society ambitions. After protraC!ld hesitations and many changes of mind he returns to Nogent, determined marry LOUIse Roque. But he leaves once more for Paris, what Madame Arnoux agrees to a rendezvous. He waits in vain at the appOinted time and place while batdes rage in the streets' for it is 22 February 1848. Disappointed and angered, he seeks consolation in the arms of Rosanette. While living through the revolution, Frederic regularly visits Rosa nette and has by her a baby son who dies very shordy thereafter. He also regularly VISitS the Dambreuses and becomes Madame Dambreuse'. lover. After her husband's death, she even offers to marry him. But wiIhh unaccustomed energy, he first breaks off with Rosanette and then wit Madame Dambreuse. He cannot see Madame Arnoux again, since �se left ParIS after her husband's bankruptcy. And so, bereft ofmthe affewons and once again penniless, he returns to Nogent to al11 LOUise Roque, only to find that she has already married his friend Deslauriers. Fifteen years later, in March 1867' Madame Arnoux comes to visil him. They declare their love for each other, recalling the past, and pat! forever. Two years later, Frederic and Deslauriers mull over the failure of theil' 111()51 lives. They have nothing left but memories of their youth, the to. memorable of which, a visit to a brothel 'Chez la Turque'' is the epiof nrfIJ of their failure: Frederic, who had the money, fled from the sight ,
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01
Sentimental Education 147 women, and Deslauriers, who had none, was obliged to red ffe o �,3nY But they both agree: 'It was there that we had the best of our foJlO�' livesh'Is very sketchy and oversim plified summary, borrowed for the r fro m a school edition, was necessary to recall the gist of the novel, �,3In was above all necessary to help point out the contrast between the but It nerally accepted reading of the work and the one which becomes ge n1DS�b le when one grasps the sociological model of society and the poss ageing that Flaubert social brings into play. of ess rp �uring this first lecture, I shall try to make this model explicit, since it reveal the structure of Sentimental Education and to me to illS s�:refore enables us to understand the novel's logic as both story and second lecture, I shall endeavour to explain Flauberfs real �istOryn. Ininthe SOCial space and how thiS position, structurally very Similar pOsitio of our main character, Frederic, tended, among othet things, to that give the author his peculiar perception of the social world depicted in the it gave him a predisposition for perceiving and exposing with novel, how lucidity the structure of this world. I shall then attempt, in the pecudliar Ihir lecrure, to bring out more systematically the model of the field of power and of the artistic field that is to be found, in a veiled form, in Sentimelltal Education and to locate my method for the analysis of literary works in the space of available models. The analysis of this novel will have thus served as a literary, and hence more easily acceptable and concrete, introduction to a sociological analysis of the literary field and of literature itself. It will also have served as an introduction to a sociological study of the relationships between the literary and sociolo gical readings of a given text, and, hence, between sociology and hterature. The truth is that the sociologist himself cannot break out of the circle Ihat he discovers in analysing· this novel. When Flaubert describes the Structure of the field of power, he gives us the key necessary for the comprehension of the novel which reveals this structure. In just the same waYh the sociologist who describes this work of revelation gives the key t� t e unde rstanding of his own understanding and to the understanding �hethesoufreedom that he achieves in discovering the necessity which lies at rce of his own lucidity. le t us return to Sentimental Education. In this novel Flaubert presents With a is l mode this of nt a eleme first The l. ative mode gener tfeiJ�esentation of the structure of the ruling class, or, as I put it, of the i of POwer. The social space described in this work is organized around two poles represented on the one hand by the art dealer Arnoux and on the and art side, one the On euse. Dambr banker other the by Pol' On the other, politics and business. At the intersection of these The Structure of
10
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Flaubert and the French Literary Field two universes, at least at the beginning, before the revolution of 1 848' there is only one character, Pere Oudry, a regular visitor at the Dambreuses', but also invited, as neighbour, to the Arnoux'. To reconstruct this social space, I simply noted methodically juSt wh o attends the different meetings or gatherings or dinners. The Dambreuses play host to anonymous, generically defined personalities, a fonner minister, a priest of a large parish, two government officials, two property owners, and well-known people from the realms of art, scien ce and politics. The Arnoux invite more .or less famous artists, always deSignated by theIr names, such as Dittmar, a painter, or Blaise, portraitist. This is normal in a field in which one of the main stakes is to become famous or to make a name for oneself, se (aire lin nom. The receptions organized by Rosanette, the demi-mondaine, bring people from these two worlds together. Her world, the demi·monde, is an in-between, intermediate world. The two poles are totally opposed to each other: on the one hand, money and luxury, on the other, money devalued in favour of intelligence. On the one hand, serious, boring, conservative conversation; on the other, readily obscene and always paradoxical speech. While the Dambreuses serve the most expensive and most classic of dishes (venison and lobster, accompanied by the best wines, served in the finest of silver), chez Arnoux the more exotic the dish, the better. These two poles are completely incompatible, as is fire with water. What is good at one pole is bad at the other, and vice versa. The writen and artists cultivate disinterested intelligence, the gratuitous act, deli berate poverty, all those things which characterize the artist's life; the powerful and the monied worship money and power. But throughout the whole space, all the lines of force converge on the pole of political and economic power. And from the outset, the Dambreuses are clearly indicated as the supreme pole of attraction for those with political and sentimental ambitions. It is with the Dambreuses in mind that DeslaU riers says to Frederic. 'Just think of it! A man with millions. See if yoer!� can't get into his good books and his wife's as well. Become her lov f Education may be read as an experimental novel in the true sense , er w o p the term. Flaubert first offers us a description of the field of dl� within which he traces the movements of six young men, inclu g Frederic, who are propelled in it like so many particles in a m a gnepi field. And each one's trajectory - what we normally call the histor)'ftefd his life - is determined by the interaction between the forces of thect°rY and his own inertia, that is, the habitus as the remanence of a tra je which tends to orient future trajectory. The field of power is a field of latent, potential forces which playwup� dl i d any particle which may venture into it, but it is also a battlefiel 1 48
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1 50
Flaubert and the French Literary Field
The Structure of Sentimental Educaa on
can be seen as a game. In this game, the trump cards are the habit us " is to say, the acqui rements, the embodied, assim ilated properties, � sU a elegance, ease of manner, beaury and so forth, and capital as su ch t t is, the inherited assets whic h define the possi bilities inher ent in the r a leld. These trump cards determine not only the sryle of play, but als success or failure in the game of the young people concerned, in s the whole process Flaubert calls education sentimentale. As if h e wished to expose to the field's forces a group of indiv idual s POSse ad s' in different combinations, those aptitudes which he cons iders the sl ng, tr cards in life and the prerequisites for social success, Flaub ert prese rnp n with a group of four young men, Frederic, Deslauriers, Mar tin on c.sy , with the addition of Hussonnet, who is alwa ys a little on the ed of things. Of noble birth, Cisy is very rich and disti ngui shed , but laJ intelligence and amb ition . Martinon is quite rich, quite good-looki ng ( at least so he says ), quite intelligent and fiercely determined to succ Deslauriers, Frederic's friend, is intelligent and is drive n by the sarne bu�n �ng deSIre for success, but he has neither money nor good looks. FrederiC, fmally, would seem to have all it takes: he is rich , charmi ng and mtellIgent; but he lacks determina tion. In the game, whi ch take s plac e in the field of power, pow er itself is obvi ousl y the stake which has to be held or seized. Two disti nctions can be drawn in relation to those who play the game, the first regarding their inheritance, i.e. their trump cards, and the second regarding their attitude towards their inhe ritance, that is to say, whether they possess the fundamental dimension of the habitus, the determination to succeed. There is thus an initia l line to be drawn between the upstarts, Deslau riers and Hussonnet, who have no other resource than their determina tion to succeed, and those who possess a certain inheritance. Among the latter, there are the untroubled heirs, who accept their inheritance and seek to preserve it, like the aristocrat Cisy, or to increase it, like the swaggering bourgeois Martinon. But there is also the heir who, sO to speak, refuses to inhe\it, that is, to be inherited by his inheritance, or to do what he should to inherit, and that is Frederic. With this polarized space the game is set up; with the description of the young men's intrin sic properties, the winni ng trump cards are dea lt, and the game may begin. For Flaubert, the interactions, the relatio nshl �5 of competition or conflict, or even the fortunate or unfortunate coin Cl' dences which shape the different life histories concerned are merely .50 many opportunities to display the characters' essence as their life stories unfold in the course of time. As the creator of the generative mode l frortl which all the subsequent adventures derive, the novelist has never obvio usly and totally entered into his role of divine creator. He end0 himse lf with the intl/ilus originarius, the generative intuit ion W�I� according to Kant, distinguishes God's creative intuition from fln lre
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151
. n tu ition . I n fact, as if in some Leibnizian universe, eV6'ything is n huflla I actu, from the outset, to the Godlike creator-spect,tOr. The n tn ive g en' s trajectories and the different forms that love, m>ney an d (I1 ung all detetmi r ed by the education are al sentiment one's each to yo ve ,ver g o in the field interacting with the embodied fOries of the p nt ese p s force en's habitus. In such a universe there is no room for cb1nce, an d you rombert is right to contradict Jean Bruneau I by sa)